Through its collaboration with UNICEF Senegal, the Ministry of National Education and other key stakeholders, Child Identity Protection (CHIP) is currently working on a project to strengthen the civil registration system and improve the process of obtaining birth certificates for students who do not have them through the school system in Senegal.

Given the global importance of education and birth registration, this research is essential to determine the link between the lack of legal proof of identity and access to education. Such research is planned by UNICEF at a regional level in 22 West and Central African States.

As civil registration, enrolment and graduation requirements, and data management systems are unique to each country, it is proposed to initially identify 3-4 pilot countries. Senegal is one of the countries chosen because of the commitment and progress made by its Ministry of Education in this area. It has adopted a strategy for detecting and registering pupils without birth certificates by 2020, by setting up a dispositive. This dispositive describes all the stages from identifying students without birth certificates to obtaining their birth certificates via the education system, in collaboration with all the players involved.

The overall aim of the project is to learn from the Senegalese experience in order to improve it and facilitate its deployment on a national or even international scale. The project consists of action research on several levels:

- Understanding and analysing the process of implementing the 2020 dispositve;

- Analysing the level of application of the dispositive in schools and daaras;

- Identifying the difficulties encountered by stakeholders during the implementation phase;

- Identify the best practices developed in the various schools;

- Identify areas for improvement and support measures.