Birth Registration, Legal Identity and Impacts on Migration in ASEAN

Abstract

Birth registration and legal identity are rights enshrined by international human rights treaties. It is widely recognised that legal identity, through birth registration and issuing documentation, is one of the most important steps to establish access to other fundamental rights, and therefore facilitates the inclusion and well-being of all people in the country. Although all member states of ASEAN recognise such a right, still millions remain unregistered. This chapter will assess why States in the region, which are supposed to be inclusive, still exclude some specific groups from obtaining legal identity, therefore sentencing them to ‘civil death’. This legal invisibility exacerbates ‘irregular migration’ in that it deprives people without legal status and legal identity from access to other rights essential for a minimum acceptable standard of living. Due to this denial of basic human rights, many decide to take the uncertain journey of migration.