For decades in the Daulatdia brothel in Bangladesh, children born there went missing, unable to register because their mothers were sex workers and their fathers unknown. Now, for the first time, 400 people in the brothel have their own birth certificates.
The milestone came after a push by campaigners who have worked for decades with undocumented children in Bangladesh, born in brothels or on the street. This means they can finally access the rights afforded to other citizens: the ability to go to school, be issued a passport or vote.
Denial of birth certificate and subsequent uncertain life means that authorities always demand the father’s name and documentation, even if they don’t know.
“They didn’t have the rights of citizens before – they were treated as aliens in society,” said Khaleda Akhtar, Bangladesh program manager of the Freedom Fund, a London-based anti-slavery organization. The reform “gives them their basic rights, it makes them feel safe, it gives them hope,” she said.
More than 700 unidentified children have now been registered in brothels in Daulatdia and elsewhere thanks to a push by the Freedom Fund and local organizations that discovered an omitted provision in the law: since 2018, births have been allowed to be registered even if there is no information on the parents.
“It is only two or three lines and is not well explained in the law, so it is not used because usually our government officials focus on the general application of policies,” she said. “When I first learned about it, we disseminated this information massively with our partners.”
Together with civil society groups, they began to find all children born in brothels, collect their information and submit it to the government, and also began lobbying local authorities about the importance of this previously ignored provision in the law.
The campaign was so successful that little advocacy was needed – mothers who knew that not having a birth certificate could hinder their children’s lives for the rest of their lives were enthusiastically encouraging other women to register their children, from trying to go to school.
Sabbir Hossain, co-author of the study on the Banishanta brothel in southwest Bangladesh, said parents once had to find alternative ways to educate their children. Some send their children to unregulated religious schools Madrassasor ask men they know to identify themselves as fathers.
Lacking a birth certificate not only denies children opportunities, but also exposes them to trafficking, Akhtar said.
For two decades, she has helped save girls from forced sex work in brothels in Bangladesh, where many are underage. Without a birth certificate, it is difficult to prove a girl under 18.
According to a 2024 Freedom Fund survey on brothels in Dhaka, nearly half of sex workers said they were forced to work in conditions they did not agree to, and more than a fifth were under 18.
“If you don’t have a birth certificate, you don’t show up in the system,” Akhtar said. “You are more vulnerable to abuse, trafficking and exploitation. These documents are not just a tool, it is about survival.”
Akhtar said he saw how a birth certificate can change a child’s life when he visited a 14-year-old girl, the fifth generation of a family living in a brothel.
“When I walked in, she asked me if I understood what this meant. I told her to tell me. She said it was her first time getting a stipend. [to afford] To go to school,” said Akhtar.
“She was smiling and I could see the happiness on her face. She said to me: ‘Khalida, the government has recognized my identity.’ She felt she finally had some protection from all the odds she faced in her childhood.
