Jeet’s story – a ‘Win’ for Digital Birth Registration
Meet Jeet. He is four years old and the first one in his family to be registered. With a name meaning ‘win’ he is set for a different path than his parents.
In the small town of Badin, in Pakistan’s Sindh province, Jeet’s parents are filled with hopes and dreams for their children. They want schooling, health care and prosperity for them. When Jeet grows up their wish for him is that he finds a job where he helps others, maybe as a doctor or a lawyer. All of which is impossible without having a registered identity.
The Digital Birth Registration tool is created by Telenor Pakistan, together with its partners Unicef and local governments in Punjab and Sindh provinces. During the pilot phase alone, birth registration in Pakistan increased from 30 to 90 per cent in just six months; nearly 50 per cent of the registered children were girls. Scale-up is now underway and the system has registered more than 21,000 children. The ambition is to register 700,000 children in 2018, covering a total of nine districts in Punjab and Sindh provinces.
When Jeet and other children are registered, they are more likely to gain access to education, healthcare and the very foundation on which all that is built: official membership in the community.