The website of the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), a department of Pakistan’s Ministry of Interior responsible for identification documents in Pakistan, indicates that the Family Registration Certificate (FRC) allows individuals to be identified with their NADRA record and provides information on the composition of the applicant’s family (Pakistan n.d.a).
A 2015 study entitled Identification for Development (ID4D) Integration Approach by the World Bank explains that NADRA [1] is “the single source of truth” in Pakistan for identification data,
through Pakistan’s primary form of identity verification, namely the “[c]omputerized [n]ational [i]dentity [c]ard (CNIC),” and that it covers “approximately” 98 percent of the entire population of Pakistan (The World Bank 2015, 113)
According to NADRA’s website, the FRC cannot be used for any legal purpose and it is instead of use for Embassy matters (Pakistan n.d.a). Sources explain that the FRC is used for verification
purposes when individuals apply for a visa “for higher education, immigration, official visit, or foreign visit” (Infola 8 Sept. 2017; Canada 16 Jan. 2018).
