A/HRC/33/22 24. To realize universal birth registration, unreasonable documentation requirements and all registration fees should be removed, birth certificates should be provided free of charge, and fees or penalties for late registration should be waived. Registration forms and materials should be provided in minority languages and in a comprehensible format. Awareness-raising among children, their parents or guardians, and communities (especially among community leaders) about the rights and benefits associated with birth registration is essential to achieving behaviour change, and parents or guardians should be made aware of their responsibility to register children. Moreover, access to essential services and entitlements should not be conditional on being registered or in possession of a birth certificate.19 25. The potential risk to privacy and the obligation of protection from discrimination and harm must be taken into account in determining the information included in a birth certificate. As such, the minimum information should be reflected on the birth certificate, and details that may pose a risk should be omitted, such as those concerning race, ethnicity, religion and parents’ marital status. The minimum information that should be recorded in a birth registration is the child’s name, gender, and date and place of birth, along with the parents’ names and addresses and the parents’ citizenship. To prevent discrimination, it should not be mandatory to record the father’s name and details.20 26. Moreover, States must prioritize the development of well-functioning civil registration systems that provide free and universal recording of vital events among the population. Civil registration should be sustainable, continuous, permanent, compulsory and universal, with records being kept securely by Governments, in a form that cannot easily be destroyed, and which may be retrieved by an individual at any stage of his or her life. The use of new technologies to expand vital event notification has shown promising results, and can mitigate the risk of permanent loss of civil records, which is a risk in the case of emergencies or natural disasters.21 Sensitive information obtained through birth registration or other civil registration processes that may be used to discriminate against an individual, such as ethnicity, race, religion or other factors relevant in a given context, should be kept confidential by law. 27. The maximum available resources should be allocated for the development of civil registration and vital statistics. While external funding can provide much-needed support, it is crucial that civil registration and vital statistics be developed in a manner that is continuous and permanent, through national ownership and the long-term allocation of public funding. C. Role of birth registration and vital statistics in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals 28. In the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, States emphasized that the Sustainable Development Goals were to be implemented in a manner consistent with 19 20 21 Hodgkin and Newell, Implementation Handbook for the Convention on the Rights of the Child, p. 100; and Committee on the Rights of the Child general comment No. 7, para. 25. UNICEF, “A passport to protection”. Countries considering the introduction of information and communications technologies to civil registration systems should take account of the relevant core guidelines available. See UNICEF and Inter-American Development Bank, “Toward universal birth registration: a systemic approach to the application of ICT”, Mia Harbitz and Kendra Gregson, eds. (2015), and the civil registration and vital statistics digitization guidebook developed under the Africa Programme on Accelerated Improvement of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Systems partnership initiative (www.crvs-dgb.org). 9