Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they will take to support the government of Pakistan to develop financial incentives for parents from marginalised religious minority communities to register their children upon birth, and to send them to schools.

DFID supports the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) which is the Government of Pakistan’s national social protection scheme. Under the BISP education programme, a total of 3.2 million children will be supported to enrol and stay in primary schools. Targeting is based on poverty status, regardless of race, religion or ethnic background, and encourages parents to provide the birth registration certificate as part of enrolment into the programme.

We do not support financial incentives for any parents to register the birth of their children, as our assessment is that this is not the most appropriate tool to improve birth registration. However, we will continue to actively engage with the Government of Pakistan to promote increased accessibility to birth registration services for marginalised and hard to reach groups, including for religious minorities. We are also designing interventions under our Aawaz II programme to directly work with groups like religious minorities in communities to better access services.