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The 40 million children who just didn't exist
This is a story about a project which found 40 million children who didn't officially exist. A campaign that, over four years and across three continents and 32 countries, has helped to protect hundreds of thousands of children in danger of being trafficked, and girls as young as 12 being forced into illegal marriages–and it is now also saving untold numbers of unborn girls from being aborted because they are the "wrong sex". It is that very rare thing: a global good news story.
It is a mission to give millions of children in the developing world something that is taken for granted in Britain: the registration of their birth and, with it, an official existence. Before the campaign–mounted by the international children's charity Plan–there were parts of the world where registration was rare. In Cambodia, for instance, as late as 2005 96 per cent of the population went unregistered. Without registration, there can be no birth certificate, no identity card, no passport, no proof of age or parentage. Thus, millions are at increased risk of being press-ganged as child soldiers or prostitutes, of not being returned to their families if liberated, of having only limited access to healthcare and education, and being deprived of their legal rights.