About 150 million children under five, around 2 in 10, have never had their birth registered, and some 800 million people worldwide have no official proof of identity, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Updated October 14, 2026. Written from the sources listed below, not independently peer-reviewed.
In sub-Saharan Africa, how many of every 100 children under five have had their birth registered?
150 million
Children under five without a registered birth
Around 2 in 10 children under five; 77% are registered worldwide. Based on data from 173 countries covering 98% of children under five, collected 2014 to 2023 and for about 80% of countries within the last five years.
Data year 2024. Source: UNICEF, 2024
About 800 million
People without official proof of identity
More than half live in sub-Saharan Africa, and more than half are children whose births were never registered. Survey-based estimate from the 2025 ID4D Global Dataset.
Data year 2024. Source: World Bank, Identification for Development, 2025
4.5 million
Stateless people reported
Known to governments and UNHCR at the end of 2025. UNHCR says the true number is likely much higher because many stateless people are not registered.
Data year 2025. Source: UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, 2026
Unit: million people
Estimates from the three editions of the World Bank's ID4D–Global Findex data as reported in October 2025. The source gives 2017 as "just over 1 billion" and 2025 as "more than 800 million", so these two points are rounded. The ID4D Global Dataset page gives the latest figure as about 800 million as of 2024. The estimates are partly survey-based.
SDG target 16.9 calls for legal identity for everyone, including birth registration, by 2030. With 150 million children under five still unregistered and global coverage rising only from 75% in 2019 to 77% in 2024, the target will not be met at the current pace. UNICEF warns that if levels stay where they are, sub-Saharan Africa alone could have more than 100 million unregistered children after 2030.
Sub-Saharan Africa has 90 million unregistered children under five, more than half of the global total. Registration there stands at 51%, and at 41% in both Eastern and Middle Africa, compared with 95% in Latin America and the Caribbean and 94% in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia.
Source: UNICEF, 2024In a study of 67 low- and middle-income countries between 1999 and 2016, 39 countries reduced the average share of unregistered children, but the gaps between rich and poor and between urban and rural families did not narrow at the same pace. In 16 countries about 1 in 2 children under five were still unregistered at the latest survey.
Source: BMJ Global Health, 2019In low-income countries, women are 5.1 percentage points less likely than men to have an ID, down from an 8-point gap in 2021. In Niger the gap in foundational ID ownership reached up to 20 percentage points in 2025.
Source: World Bank, 2025The Rohingya are the largest stateless group, with 1.8 million people or 41% of the stateless population reported worldwide, and about 1.2 million of them live as refugees in Bangladesh. Around 1.6 million stateless people are also forcibly displaced.
Source: UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, 2026Each country is shaded by its latest available value, so you can see where the gap is widest. Hover or tap a country, search for one, or open the full table.
Loading country values…
Shows 100 minus the completeness of birth registration: the share of children under five whose birth was not registered, as reported in household surveys such as DHS and MICS. Values are the latest year available per country from 2010 to 2022 and years differ widely; several are from the mid-2010s, so countries that have improved since, such as some in sub-Saharan Africa, may look worse than they are today. Children registered without a certificate count as registered.
Source: Household surveys (DHS, MICS) compiled by UNICEF, via World Bank Open Data. Latest year available per country; years differ.
Values load from World Bank Open Data. Simplified Natural Earth borders; they imply no position on disputed territories.
Instead of one “percent solved” score, DO GOOD rates three separate dimensions. A problem can have mature solutions that still reach too few people. These ratings are an editorial reading of the sources on this page, not a measured index.
Has the situation improved in the real world?
ModerateBirth registration of children under five rose from 75% in 2019 to 77%, and the number of people without official ID fell from just over 1 billion in 2017 to about 800 million. But 150 million young children remain unregistered.
How mature and validated are the available solutions?
HighCivil registration is a long-established public service, and the methods that have raised registration, such as linking it to health and social programmes, removing fees and bringing services closer, are well known. Botswana has reached universal registration and Latin America and the Caribbean 95%.
How widely are effective solutions actually used?
ModerateClose to 8 in 10 young children are registered worldwide, but only about half in sub-Saharan Africa and 41% in Eastern and Middle Africa, where the need is greatest.
UNICEF's estimates cover 173 countries and 98% of children under five, but rely partly on surveys up to ten years old. Counts of people without ID are survey-based, and UNHCR's statelessness figures are a known undercount.
Registration and ID coverage are rising, and adult ID coverage in sub-Saharan Africa grew from 72% in 2017 to 81% in 2025. The pace is too slow to reach legal identity for all by 2030, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.
Birth registration is a government's official record that a child was born, and the birth certificate is usually the first document that proves who a person is, how old they are and who their parents are. UNICEF estimates that 77% of children under five worldwide have had their birth registered, up from 75% in 2019, but about 150 million children, roughly 2 in 10, have not. More than 50 million further children are registered but have no birth certificate. Beyond childhood, the World Bank's ID4D initiative estimates that about 800 million people had no official proof of identity in 2024, and that more than half of them are children whose births were never registered.
The gaps are concentrated in poorer countries. In sub-Saharan Africa only 51% of young children are registered, and in Eastern and Middle Africa just 41%. Birth registration opens the way to vaccines, health care and schooling, and adults without an ID can be unable to vote, get a formal job, open a bank account or use health care. In the 2025 ID4D–Global Findex survey, about 41% of adults without an ID said they could not buy a SIM card, which also cuts them off from mobile money. At the extreme are stateless people, who have no nationality at all. UNHCR counted 4.5 million stateless people at the end of 2025 and says the true number is likely much higher, because many stateless groups are never registered.
The UN Legal Identity Agenda defines legal identity as the basic facts of a person's identity, such as name, sex, and place and date of birth, conferred through civil registration of the birth and the issue of a certificate. Where a birth was never registered, a legally recognised identification authority can confer it instead. SDG target 16.9 calls for legal identity for all, including birth registration, by 2030. Four measures are used:
Birth registration of children under five
SDG indicator 16.9.1 is the share of children under five whose birth has been registered with a civil authority. In most low- and middle-income countries it is measured with household surveys such as MICS and DHS, which count a child as registered if the family shows a birth certificate or reports that the birth was registered.
Birth certificates
Registration and certification are not the same. A child can be on the civil register without the family ever receiving a certificate, which is the document needed to prove the registration later. UNICEF counts more than 50 million registered children who lack one.
Official proof of identity
The World Bank's ID4D Global Dataset estimates how many people of all ages have no official ID. The 2025 edition draws on survey questions about ID ownership in the 2024 round of the Global Findex survey, and more than half of the people it counts are children whose births were never registered.
Statelessness
UNHCR reports the number of stateless people known to governments and to UNHCR. Because many stateless populations are not registered anywhere, the reported figure is a minimum, not an estimate of the true total.
What works
When registration is offered where families already go, such as at birth, vaccination visits, enrolment in social programmes or school entry, fewer children are missed. UNICEF names the use of health, social protection and education systems as one of the main drivers of global progress.
Limits
This only reaches families who use those services. Children born at home, in remote areas or in crises, who are least likely to be registered, may also miss health visits, and health workers need time, training and a working link to the civil registry.
What works
Removing fees, cutting the number of required visits and documents, and opening more registration points lower the cost to families. In sub-Saharan African countries where fewer than 70% of adults have an ID, the reasons given most often for having none were distance (45%), documents required (42%) and cost (40%).
Limits
Abolishing an official fee does not remove indirect costs such as travel and lost working days. More offices need staff and budget, and late registration of older children and adults is usually harder than registering a birth on time.
What works
Foundational ID systems give adults a credential they can use for services, banking and mobile phones. ID coverage among adults in sub-Saharan Africa rose from 72% in 2017 to 81% in 2025, and adult coverage is now near universal in most other regions.
Limits
Progress is uneven: eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa still reported adult ID coverage below 70% in 2025, and men are significantly more likely than women to hold an ID in nine developing economies. More than half of the people without ID are children whose births were never registered, whom adult ID programmes do not reach.
What works
Some countries have reduced registration gaps by wealth and location at the same time as raising the national average. In Sierra Leone the gap between the richest and poorest households narrowed from 52.5 percentage points in 2005 to 4.7 points in 2013, and ten countries reduced both non-registration and wealth gaps.
Limits
Most countries in the study raised average registration without closing these gaps, and the study does not show which specific policies produced the successes.
What works
Changing nationality laws, allowing naturalisation and setting up procedures to identify stateless people give them a path to citizenship. In 2025, 46,100 stateless people acquired a nationality in these ways.
Limits
This is small compared with the 4.5 million stateless people reported, and the true number is likely much higher. Reform depends on political decisions by governments, and people who are not registered anywhere are hard to reach with determination procedures.
Promising, but not proven at scale. The stage shows how far each approach has come; it is not a recommendation.
Some governments issue digital credentials that people can use to prove their identity online. About 45% of countries, 89 in all and 51 of them high-income, offered such a credential in 2024, and 2.8 billion people still lack access to one. Whether digital ID widens access or creates new barriers for people with little connectivity is still being measured.
The 2025 ID4D–Global Findex survey piloted questions on ownership and use of online digital ID. In countries with such systems, about 46% of adults said they owned one and 35% that they used it, ranging from 5% ownership in Bolivia to 81% in Türkiye. These metrics are new and not yet comparable over time.
The UN Legal Identity Agenda, a task force of 13 UN agencies set up in 2018, promotes a single, interoperable system covering civil registration, vital statistics and identity management from birth to death. In 2021 six African countries received seed funding of about 40,000 to 150,000 US dollars each to start this work.
Moving birth registration from paper to digital systems can shorten the process and allow registration at more locations. UNICEF lists digitalisation among the drivers of recent progress, but systems depend on connectivity, electricity and data protection, and there is little published evidence comparing their effect with other measures.
Implementation gap
Families face long journeys and repeated visits, unclear procedures, fees and indirect costs. Among adults without ID in low-coverage sub-Saharan African countries, 45% cited distance, 42% document requirements and 40% cost.
Coordination gap
UNICEF names weak political commitment as a barrier and calls for legal reform of civil registration systems. The UN Legal Identity Agenda calls for civil registration, vital statistics and identity management to work as one interoperable system, which requires separate agencies to cooperate.
Implementation gap
More than 50 million children are on a register but have no birth certificate, so their families may be unable to prove the registration when a child enrols in school or applies for other documents.
Coordination gap
In some places discrimination based on gender, ethnicity or religion keeps families from registering births. Statelessness is concentrated in a few groups and countries: Myanmar, Thailand, Côte d'Ivoire and Bangladesh together hold 7 in 10 of the stateless people reported, and the Rohingya alone number 1.8 million.
Implementation gap
National averages can rise while the poorest and rural children are left behind: in many low- and middle-income countries, wealth and urban–rural gaps in registration did not narrow between 1999 and 2016 even where overall registration improved.
Knowledge gap
Many countries' birth registration figures come from household surveys conducted several years ago, and stateless populations are often not counted at all, so it is hard to know where coverage is improving and who is still missing.
Unresolved questions, not vetted breakthroughs. Answering any of them would change what is possible.
Some countries reduced wealth and urban–rural gaps in birth registration while others raised averages without doing so. Which combinations of free registration, outreach and links to services explain the difference?
Registered children tend to have better access to schooling and health care, but they also tend to come from better-off families. How much does registration on its own improve children's access to services and protection?
As services move online, do digital ID systems help people without documents get access, or do they add new barriers for women, older people and those without connectivity?
UNHCR reports 4.5 million stateless people but says the true number is likely much higher. How can stateless populations be counted reliably without exposing them to harm?
Make sure every child in your household has a registered birth and a birth certificate, and help relatives, neighbours or newcomers who are unsure how to register a birth find the right office.
Consider giving to or volunteering with organisations that help families register births late, obtain documents or claim a nationality, and that report how many people they have helped.
Ask your elected representatives to fund civil registration, to keep birth registration free and accessible, and to support nationality laws that do not leave anyone stateless.
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UNICEF (press release, 11 December 2024), published 2024
Latest UNICEF global estimates of birth registration of children under five: 77% registered, 150 million unregistered, more than 50 million without a certificate, regional levels, drivers of progress and barriers. Data from 173 countries covering 98% of children under five.
World Bank, Identification for Development (ID4D), published 2025
Estimate that about 800 million people had no official ID as of 2024, with breakdowns by region and gender, reasons for not having an ID, and access to digital ID for online transactions. Based partly on the 2024 round of the Global Findex survey.
World Bank (Digital Development blog, 30 October 2025), published 2025
Summary of the ID4D–Global Findex 2025 data by the ID4D team: people without ID in 2017, 2021 and 2025, adult ID coverage in sub-Saharan Africa, gender gaps, and pilot measures of digital ID ownership and use.
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, published 2026
Annual statistical report (June 2026) with the number of reported stateless people at the end of 2025 (4.5 million), the largest stateless populations, overlap with displacement and the number who acquired a nationality during 2025.
BMJ Global Health (Bhatia A. et al.), 4(6): e001926, published 2019
Peer-reviewed analysis of 173 household surveys covering 9.3 million children in 67 low- and middle-income countries, examining whether wealth and urban–rural inequalities in birth registration narrowed as national averages rose.
United Nations Statistics Division (UN Legal Identity Agenda Task Force), published 2026
UN definition of legal identity and the approach of linking civil registration, vital statistics and identity management, with the task force of 13 UN agencies and its pilot countries (pilot-countries sub-page).