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The ‘Unregistered Children Project' was started by the NGO Committee on Unicef in 1996 as part of the Committee's quest for outreach to different regions in the world. It was the third step in this direction following the Forum on Effective Participation in Local and Global Child Development in Zimbabwe in 1991, and a Conference on the Rights of the Child in Central America, Belize, Panama and Mexico in Antigua, Guatemala, in 1993.
The project's first consultation held in Bangkok in 1996 was a smaller and more issue-oriented meeting that tried to address the poor rate of birth registration in South-East Asia. With financial backing from the Swiss Development and Cooperation Agency, and in cooperation with the Bangkok-based NGO ASIANET for the Rights of Children , the consultation examined preliminary research undertaken by five countries of the six (Cambodia, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam) represented in Bangkok. As ASIANET unfortunately proved unable to develop the project further, it was kept in abeyance until Plan, the well known development NGO, took it on in 1998.
From the first in-depth research in the Philippines and the first NGO Committee/Plan consultation in Manila in 1999, the work spread quickly to Vietnam , Cambodia and other countries in Asia as well as to South-East and Western Africa . Central America will be next.
Much has been achieved thanks to a solid partnership between Plan and Unicef. For lack of financial means, the Committee's participation has waned although it is still represented and active at most Plan/Unicef BR events.
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