A/HRC/27/22 encountered. Furthermore, the quality of registration systems is also important, and should be accurate, efficient and permanent. 7. Birth registration should be part of a wider civil registration system that includes the free and universal recording of the occurrence and characteristics of key events – births, deaths, adoptions, marriages and divorces – and other civil status events pertaining to the population. These records are the main source of vital statistics; the complete coverage, accuracy and timeliness of civil registration is therefore essential, as is the confidentiality of personal data handled by the system. These two systems are interrelated and must be developed holistically; improvements in birth registration are rarely possible without the improvement of the civil registration system as a whole.4 III. International legal framework 8. The right to birth registration and the right of everyone to recognition everywhere as a person before the law is a universal human right, first acknowledged in article 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and specifically recognized in article 24, paragraph 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states that every child shall be registered immediately after birth. In its general comment No. 17 on the rights of the child,5 the Human Rights Committee stated that article 24, paragraph 2 should be interpreted as being closely linked to the right to special measures of protection, and that the main purpose of the obligation to register children after birth is to reduce the danger of abduction, sale of or traffic in children, or of other types of treatment that are incompatible with the enjoyment of the rights provided for in the Covenant. 9. The Convention on the Rights of the Child reinforces the fundamental importance of the right to birth registration in its article 7, which states that the child should be registered immediately after birth and have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and, as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents. It further provides for States parties to ensure the implementation of these rights in accordance with their national law and their obligations under the relevant international instruments in this field, in particular where the child would otherwise be stateless. 10. All rights under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, including article 7, must be in full conformity with the general principles of the Convention, namely nondiscrimination, the best interests of the child, the right to life, survival and development and the right of the child to express his or her views. 11. In the context of birth registration, non-discrimination implies that States must ensure that access to registration is not undermined by discrimination of any kind, including on the basis of the child’s – or the child’s parent’s or legal guardian’s – race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, property, disability, birth or other status. All children should have access to birth registration in the country where they are born, including non-nationals, asylum seekers, refugees and stateless children.6 12. The importance of birth registration in a child’s life and the impact of nonregistration on the enjoyment of the rights of the child are acknowledged regularly by the 4 5 6 4 Ibid., p. 21. Official Records of the General Assembly, Forty-fourth Session, Supplement No. 40 (A/44/40), annex VI, para. 7. Rached Hodgkin and Peter Newell, Implementation Handbook for the Convention on the Rights of the Child, (UNICEF, 2007), p. 97.