Brazil’s civil registry is operated exclusively by notary offices. These notaries are not public officers but rather private actors providing a public service, delegated to them by law.101 Brazilian consular offices administer the civil registry for Brazilians abroad, by exercising notary functions, such as the issuance of birth, death, and marriage certificates.102 This civil registration system is unique in the region; the only other country in which notaries register births is Colombia, but the National Civil Registry Office manages Colombia’s civil registration activities and state actors also serve this function. Brazil lacks such a central government entity in charge of civil registration and national identification. Right to Identity and Process to Secure Identity Documents Article 5 of the 1988 Constitution recognizes the right of every person to have a birth certificate,103 and Law 6.015 of 1973 and Law 9.534 of 1997 regulate the functioning of the civil registry throughout the national territory. The latter establishes that birth registration is free of charge in Brazil.104 In Brazil, a birth certificate is the foundational document for other national identity documents in later childhood as well as in adulthood. The birth certificate of a child born in Brazil is also his or her first document of identity. Without a birth certificate, a person is unable to prove his or her Brazilian nationality and will not be able to obtain other official documents of identity, including: (i) registro geral—RG (general registry or national identity card),105 (ii) cadastro de pessoa física—CPF 106 (registry of physical person), and (iii) título de eleitor (voter’s registry card).107 Each of these documents will determine access to rights and services as a national of Brazil. The Brazilian Civil Code Article 2 states that a person’s civil personage begins with live birth. Birth registration is the official recognition of the existence of that person by the state in which the person was born; Article 236 of the Constitution specifies that state-level legislation establishes the procedures for birth registration within each state. Each of the 26 states and the federal territory in Brazil conduct and regulate civil registration differently. This decentralized approach has resulted in the underregistration of births among certain groups. Rural and impoverished communities, undocumented migrants, and members of ethnic minorities have faced structural barriers in accessing identity documents, particularly birth certificates.108 New social policies developed in the late 1990s and early 2000s109 under Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government,110 for which birth registration and birth certificates were necessary to access new benefits, uncovered a high number of undocumented people in Brazil. These new benefits provided a strong incentive for undocumented 42 COUNTRY PROFILES l BRAZIL