© UNHCR/Martin San Diego Almalyn Akmad (in yellow headscarf) distributes birth registration certificates to her fellow Sama Bajaus in Kasanyangan, Zamboanga City, the Philippines. She is a community volunteer for a project supported by UNHCR and UNICEF to register members of the nomadic Sama Bajau people. More than 600 Sama Bajau have been provided with birth certificates, giving them access to suffrage, health, and education services. shared for any purposes that were not specified when the data was initially collected, and that are not compatible with the initial purpose. States are recommended to prohibit data-sharing between health-care providers or civil servants responsible for birth registration and immigration enforcement authorities, and to not require parents to produce documentation regarding their migration status during the birth registration process.32 In addition, digital systems should be flexible to allow alternative forms of documentation or witness statements to be accepted where parents do not have passports, birth certificates and/or national ID cards. 32 33 20 Many countries are setting up national integrated civil registry and identity management systems including provision of unique national identifiers. In many cases, and in line with the principle of universality, this is a computerized registry of all persons residing in a country. The civil registration system submits information to the national population register or ID management system and vice versa. The storage, sharing, processing and use of this information must be in line with data protection principles and relevant national data protection legal frameworks. As policy and practice in this area develop further, additional guidance on the specific considerations for forcibly displaced and stateless persons may be warranted.33 The necessity of due diligence regarding safeguards in the sharing of data between authorities and/or countries, and implementation of a “firewall” by States in prohibiting the sharing and use for immigration enforcement of the personal data collected for other purposes, is referenced in “Joint general comment No. 4 (2017) of the Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families and No. 23 (2017) of the Committee on the Rights of the Child on State obligations regarding the human rights of children in the context of international migration in countries of origin, transit, destination and return”, CMW/C/GC/4-CRC/C/GC/23 (16 November 2017), para. 17. https://www.refworld.org/legal/general/ cmw/2017/en/119567. See “Use of digital technologies to achieve universal birth registration”, Human Rights Council, fifty-ninth session (July 2025). https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/ahrc5961-use-digital-technologies-achieve-universal-birth-registration Birth registration of forcibly displaced and stateless persons