The Organization of the American States, UNICEF and the Inter-American Development Bank have signed an agreement in Bogota to launch a universal birth registry throughout Latin America.
The alliance between the three institutions comes after UNICEF estimated that close to 2 million of the 11 million annual births in the region remain unregistered. It aims to guarantee the universal registration of births by 2015.
Jose Miguel Insulza, the secretary general of the Organization of American States, explains why this is their concern.
 "People who don't have an identity, who are not recognized by any registers, of course are very vulnerable to the enormous trafficking of people that still remains in our region, such as slave, child and women trafficking."
Ann M. Veneman, the executive director of UNICEF, says they will work on various ways to achieve the goal of universal registration.
"First, we need to work with national governments to build systems that will institutionalize birth registration as a national system and as a national right."
The project between the three institutions does not count on financing yet but will try in this first phase to identify the countries where it will support the systems of civil registry.
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Director: Liu Chi