According to a report published in 2013 by UNICEF “One in three children under-five does not officially exist."
The report says “the births of nearly 230 million children under-five have never been registered; approximately one in three of all children under-five around the world.”
Children unregistered at birth will not have documentation proving who they are, including a birth certificate, which can deny them from accessing education, health care and social security programs and from obtaining a passport.
For poor families in underdeveloped countries, especially those living in remote areas, registering a birth can mean having to travel a great distance to a government office which they do not have time to do or for which they are not able to afford the cost.
Adama Sawadogo, a documentation security consultant in Burkina Faso worked three years on an invention he calls ‘iCivil’ that could revolutionize the registration of children. iCivil couples the SMS text capabilities of a smartphone with a secure authentication technology called ‘Bubble Tag’, developed by the French company Prooftag.
A newborn child receives a wrist bracelet with a QR (Quick Response) barcode which can be scanned by the smartphone. Details of the child’s birth are then sent as an SMS message to a central computer server operated by the government of the country.

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According to a report published in 2013 by UNICEF “One in three children under-five does not officially exist”.
The report says “the births of nearly 230 million children under-five have never been registered; approximately one in three of all children under-five around the world.”
Children unregistered at birth will not have documentation proving who they are, including a birth certificate, which can deny them from accessing education, health care and social security programs and from obtaining a passport.
For poor families in underdeveloped countries, especially those living in remote areas, registering a birth can mean having to travel a great distance to a government office which they do not have time to do or for which they are not able to afford the cost.
Adama Sawadogo, a documentation security consultant in Burkina Faso worked three years on an invention he calls ‘iCivil’ that could revolutionize the registration of children. iCivil couples the SMS text capabilities of a smartphone with a secure authentication technology called ‘Bubble Tag’, developed by the French company Prooftag.
A newborn child receives a wrist bracelet with a QR (Quick Response) barcode which can be scanned by the smartphone. Details of the child’s birth are then sent as an SMS message to a central computer server operated by the government of the country.

Scenes of Hotel Splendid after the terrorist attack in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, where 30 were people killed, including many foreigners. Hotel Splendid was one of the targets along with a bar across the street.

Hotel Splendid in Ouagadougou, a few days after the terrorist attack that killed 30 people.

Street lanterns melted from the explosions outside the hotel.

Journal holder in the hallway of the hotel.

The destroyed hallway of Hotel Splendid

The destroyed hallway of Hotel Splendid

The destroyed hallway of Hotel Splendid

Gloves from the cleaning team after the attacks.

Entrance hall of Hotel Splendid

Animals stickers as found on the main door of Hotel Splendid

The thrash in the back of the hotel - and in the background the mosque where the attackers went praying instances before the attacks.

A funeral was held today for five members of a Lebanese family killed in the crash of an Air Algerie passenger jet in July in Mali.
Bilal Dhieny and his wife Korean Bienrit and their three children, Malik, Olivia and Rayan were among 116 people onboard the flight that crashed July 26, 2014 in a remote area near the border with Burkina Faso. Twenty Lebanese were killed in the crash.
The family funeral was held in the family's hometown of Kharayeb , South Lebanon .

This photo essay gives an insight into Burkina Faso’s growing gold industry and depicts the humans that risk their lives extracting this precious metal.

Children have to work in the artisanal gold mines of Bouda in order to support their families, despite the fact that child labour is illegal in Burkina Faso.

The women of the surrounding villages come by to collect the potable groundwater as the miners switch on the pump.

A steep and unsupported mine shaft with a depth of about ten meters.

A young miner wears an improvised headlamp after coming out of a mine shaft near Bouda.

A group of workers takes a break under a tarp

A group of women washes their clothes and also pans for gold.

A miner squats in front of a generator which is used to pump water out of the deeper mine shafts.

A boy sells little plastic bags containing water to the workers in the vicinity.

A small hut that is used by the workers to stow away tools and clothes.

A woman carries excavated soil from a mine shaft on her head.

Miners pull out bags of soil out of one of the deeper shafts.