{"bills":[{"photos":{"featured":"https://assets.causes.com/bill/photo/s802-114/featured_girls-count-act-of-2015-1454548593.jpg","featured_large":"https://assets.causes.com/bill/photo/s802-114/featured_large_girls-count-act-of-2015-1454548593.jpg","shareable":"https://n.causes.com/share-images/bills/s802-114.png"},"introduced_on":"2015-03-19","title_override":"Does the U.S. Need to Encourage Other Countries to Document Their Baby Girls?","summary_override":"

This bill seeks to improve the lives of girls in foreign countries by ensuring they receive documentation.

According to the bill text, while many countries have birth registration laws — 4 out of 10 babies born in the world in 2012 were not registered. In addition, an estimated 36 percent of kids under five years old don't have a birth certificate. According to Sponsoring Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) notes in his release, without documentation, children are vulnerable to:

\"human trafficking and exploitation, but it also leaves them excluded from accessing basic services in their countries, such as education.\"

This bill authorizes the Secretary of State and the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to offer support for a number of programs designed to encourage the documentation of girls in other countries. Those programs include ones aimed at:

Developing and improving national systems to track births and deaths i.e. Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Systems;
Developing legal and political methods to ensure that girls get birth certificates;
Preventing discrimination against women and girls in home ownership, inheritance rights, and access to education.

The bill also encourages collaboration with the World Bank and U.N. agencies to implement and enforce laws to collect data on women and girls, and ensure that they’re able to participate in civic life. It also encourages collaboration with private sector entities to prevent exploitation and violence against children.

Finally, the Secretary of State would have to report to Congress, detailing the most effective programs, and who is benefitting from the programs.

","official_title":"A bill to authorize the Secretary of State and the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development to provide assistance to support the rights of women and girls in developing countries, and for other purposes.","short_title":"Girls Count Act of 2015","popular_title":null,"short_summary":"(This measure has not been amended since it was reported to the Senate on May 21, 2015. The summary of that version is repeated here.)\n\nGirls Count Act of 2015\n\n(Sec. 3) This bill states that it is U.S. policy to:\n\n encourage countries to support the rule of law and ensure girls and boys of all ages are able to fully participate in society, including by providing birth certifications and other official documentation; enhance training and capacity-building in key developing countries, local nongovernmental organizations, and other civil society organizations in the design, implementation, and monitoring of programs to address the needs of birth registries in countries where girls are systematically under counted; and incorporate into the design, implementation, and evaluation of policies and programs measures to evaluate the impact on girls of such policies and programs. (Sec. 4) Authorizes the Secretary and the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development to support:\n\n...","summarized":true,"cost":null,"cost_commentary":"According to a CBO estimate, this bill would cost $1 million over the four years between 2016-2020. ","impact":"Girls in places where they aren’t always documented, these countries’ governments, NGOs in these countries, the Secretary of State, USAID the United Nations. ","argument_for":"This bill would incentivize documenting infant girls in other countries. This is a huge problem in other countries: they don’t count girls, leaving them unable to participate in programs that require ID — the U.S. ought to help out. ","argument_against":"This bill encourages the U.S. to meddle in other countries’ affairs — and the U.S. should focus on it's own domestic child registry problems before telling other countries how they should document children. 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What other countries do is unenforceable in the U.S. and none of our business ","show_argument_for":false,"show_argument_against":true,"upvote_count":0,"upvotes_for_count":null,"upvotes_against_count":0,"has_upvoted":false,"endorsement_count":0,"links":{"self":"https://www.causes.com/positions/21bd52db-a393-4a36-986a-e7b91dbe48d4"},"body":"The world is sick and tired of America's opinions. What other countries do is unenforceable in the U.S. and none of our business ","stance":"nay","created_at":"2015-06-03T13:56:51.717Z","shareable_image_url":"https://n.causes.com/share-images/positions/21bd52db-a393-4a36-986a-e7b91dbe48d4.png","note_color":null,"note_text":null,"bill_id":"s802-114","user_id":"Om6LgjW1","endorser_ids":[]}}

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Does the U.S. Need to Encourage Other Countries to Document Their Baby Girls?