Building relationships

Creating opportunities for children to participate in community development

The right to an identity is one of the most basic rights of children, yet about 70 per cent of primary school children in Togo don’t have birth certificates. A birth certificate is a ticket to citizenship and children who are unregistered at birth will never have the right to marry, own property, vote or stand for election.

In response to this, last year we completed an innovative project to get the government to recognise 2,314 children, who now have official papers. The difference it makes is clearly articulated by 13 year-old Kossi: 

“I never imagined that one day someone apart from my parents would help me acquire a birth certificate. What Plan did for me was so good.”