KARACHI: The Sindh Local government department in partnership with UNICEF launched the digital birth registration project here on Friday, to upscale the registration of children as a measure of safeguarding their basic right for an identity. The project which was initially piloted in Thatta during 2015, is now being extended to Badin and Naushero Feroze in the coming year, while planning has been done to further expand it to Umerkot and Tharparkar by 2018, said a statement on Friday. The project uses innovative methods to improve birth registration rates for children through the use of mobile phone technology. A pilot project was conducted in two Union Councils of Thatta with the partnership of UNICEF, Telenor and departments of Local Government and Health. The intervention has deemed highly encouraging results, showing that 94 per cent of births are now being registered in these Union Councils, within the first 60 days of birth in accordance with the law. “I am grateful for this opportunity to highlight that birth registration is a fundamental right for all children – the right to a name and legal identity,” said UNICEF Representative to Pakistan Angela Kearney. UNICEF looks forward to a strengthened partnership with the Sindh government and Telenor to expand the digital birth registration pilot project across the target districts and facilitate the registration of two million un-registered children within 286 UCs. The Sindh Multi Indicator Cluster Survey conducted in 2014 by the Sindh government, with the technical support of UNICEF, indicates that the rate of registered births for children under five stands at 29 per cent in the province. Pakistan is a signatory to the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and as per Article 7 of the convention, is responsible to undertake legal and administrative measures for a child to be registered immediately after birth.