Birth registration is so critical to eradicating extreme poverty that is considered a key success indicator for the sixteenth sustainable development goal on promoting peaceful and inclusive societies and providing access to justice for all. But globally, one in every four, or 166 million children under the age of five are unregistered, according to UNICEF. This is a “scandal of invisibility” which is also present in the Philippines, where anywhere from 5 to 7.5 million Filipinos, of whom 40 percent are children, do not have birth certificates, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority and the Child Rights Network.
We review 20 identification requirements in the Philippines and find that a person’s birth certificate is needed to get an education, to vote, to enter the civil service, to wed in civil courts, to qualify for professional licenses, to legally drive vehicles, to claim pension benefits, and to claim inheritance, among other rights and privileges.