The project aims at increasing demand for registrations in selected Union Councils of Sindh and Punjab in addition to inducing a proactive approach towards bringing birth registration services to the public. The project will play a pivotal role in improved citizen interactions through process optimization, better planning and management of data for the government, and improved health awareness through uptake of mobile-health (m-health) services.

Simple yet powerful solution

A simple SMS-based solution will be used to report birth counts. However, the actual birth registration details will be reported through authorized community members such as health workers and marriage registrars, or through ICL Pakistan’s distribution nodes, to the designated government official using an android application. The data coming in from both the SMS and android application will be made accessible by simple web-based dashboards to concerned stakeholders, which will help create heat-maps for areas requiring the most attention. M-health advisories will also be pushed for the benefit of the mother and child.

A Win-Win Partnership

“We at ICL Pakistan aim to empower societies by extending the benefits of telecommunications through innovative measures to the masses” says Muhammad Aslam Hayat, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer ICL Pakistan. “Considering proof of identity an essential prerequisite for gaining access to basic services, and to exercising fundamental human rights, … our partnership with UNICEF… will not only help boost birth registration rate per se, but will also establish the importance of technology for enabling a child’s right to registration”.

For Dan Rohrmann, the then UNICEF Representative in Pakistan, “this project has tremendous implications for the right of every child in Pakistan as birth registration is an important instrument to realize children’s right to health, education and other services in particular protection against violence, abuse and exploitation. International experience shows that innovation as well as usage of new technologies significantly facilitates access to basic social services and birth registration is the key to this effect. We hope this breakthrough in partnership and innovation between the Local Governments, ICL and UNICEF will help achieve the ultimate goal of permanent, continuous and universal birth registration in Pakistan.”

This collaboration is part of the larger global collaboration between ICL Group and UNICEF to explore innovative solutions using mobile technology for the benefit of UNICEF’s programmes for children in all markets where ICL operates.