As part of the Identification for Development (ID4D) Initiative, the World Bank Group addresses technical aspects of civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) in four recent publications.
 

This information note, developed by ESCAP with support from the Regional Steering Group for CRVS in Asia and the Pacific and other partners, highlights the connection between civil registration and voter registration.

The meeting of the 4th National Steering and Coordination Committee Meeting on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) was held on January 17, 2018 in Islamabad.

UNHCR is publishing a series of Good Practices Papers to help States, with the support of other stakeholders, achieve the goals of its #IBelong Campaign to End Statelessness by 2024.

This information note, developed by the Regional Steering Group for CRVS in Asia and the Pacific with support from ESCAP and partners, highlights the importance of national CRVS strategies, their role within the Regional Action Framework and suggests the content of comprehensive national CRVS strategies.

This brochure highlights the need for further research in the area of CRVS and outlines issues and challenges that research can address. In addition, it gives an overview of current research activities related to CRVS.

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In recent years, Myanmar has made substantial progress in improving its CRVS system. Under the Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health (D4H) Initiative, an evaluation of the existing civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) system was conducted using CRVS system architecture analysis framework to prepare for an innovative program of strategic CRVS improvement activities.

The Afghanistan Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Country Strategic Plan 2016-2020 was commissioned by the World Health Office in Kabul Afghanistan in response to a request from the Afghanistan Ministry of Public Health. Universal civil registration is crucial because it helps safeguard human rights and vital statistics information can be used for planning, administration and research across multiple sectors including education, labour and health. The strategic plan is based on comprehensive assessments of the country’s institutional capacity to implement CRVS activities.

The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) defines civil registration as the continuous, permanent, compulsory and universal recording of the occurrence and characteristics of vital events pertaining to the population, as provided through decree or regulation in accordance with the legal requirements in each country. Civil registration is the best source of vital statistics since it constitutes the collection of statistics on vital events in a lifetime of a person as well as relevant characteristics of the events themselves and of the person and persons concerned.

Civil registration is integral to the Indonesian government’s current poverty-reduction strategy, both for its ability to confer legal identity to citizens and as the principal source of the country’s vital statistics. Unfortunately, ownership of key civil registration documents, such as birth certificates and death certificates, remains exceptionally low, and governments are often unable to access timely, reliable, and comprehensive vital statistics.

Presentation given by the Turkish Statistical Institute, Demographic Statistics Department, Vital and Gender Statistics Group to the Sub-regional Asian workshop on applying principles and recommendations for implementing the Regional Action Framework for strengthening CRVS, Istanbul, Turkey, 15 -18 September 2015. 

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Presentation to the Sub-regional Asian workshop on applying principles and recommendations for implementing the Regional Action Framework for strengthening CRVS, Istanbul, Turkey, 15 -18 September 2015. 

Presentation by Mrs. Dilbakhor Yakubova, Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Uzbekistan, to the Sub-regional Asian workshop on applying principles and recommendations for implementing the Regional Action Framework for strengthening CRVS, Istanbul, Turkey, 15 -18 September 2015.

Presentation by Kyrgyzstan to the Sub-regional Asian workshop on applying principles and recommendations for implementing the Regional Action Framework for strengthening CRVS, Istanbul, Turkey, 15 -18 September 2015. 

Presentation by the Committee on Statistics Ministry of National Economy of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the Sub-regional Asian workshop on applying principles and recommendations for implementing the Regional Action Framework for strengthening CRVS Istanbul, Turkey, 15 -18 September 2015. 

Provides a brief overview of the current status of CRVS in Cambodia

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ODIHR has developed these guidelinesin answer to the growing number of requests for expertise and policy advice from participating States.

These guidelines provide a tool for practitioners, relevant authorities and political decision makers in OSCE participating States to use when assessing the efficiency of their national systems of population registration and, when necessary, reforming them.

This publication serves as a report of the 'Regional Expert Roundtable on Good Practices for the Identification, Prevention and Reduction of Statelessness and the Protection of Stateless Persons in South East Asia', organized in Bangkok on 28 to 29 October 2010. It provides an insight into some of the region’s good practices, which are included from each of the four pillars of response: the identification, prevention and reduction of statelessness and the protection of stateless persons.

This study aims to assess the quality of mortality data from the registration system of Thailand. The study takes advantage of the Kanchanaburi Project by comparing the deaths found in the annual censuses to those recorded in the civil registration system in order to measure the level of under-registration. The age and sex pattern of death registration found in this study might be useful information in adjusting the data from this source.

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Register data on maternal deaths is adjusted in international reports to account for underreporting; however, there has been controversy around these adjustments. The objective of this article is to review the adjustment factors applied to maternal mortality register data. A literature review provided 72 studies on underreporting showing differences in the definition of maternal mortality. This has not previously been taken into account when calculating average adjustment factors.

In 2015, world leaders agreed the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Agenda 2030). Its goal is to end poverty in all its forms everywhere, with a specific target to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030 and a commitment to leave no one behind. Achieving these ambitions will be much harder than meeting the Millennium Development Goals. It will require a different mindset, and new ways of measuring and monitoring progress.

UN Population Division's presentation made at the Expert Group Meeting on "Methodology and lessons learned to evaluate the completeness and quality of vital statistics data from civil registration“, New York, 3‐4 November 2016.

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• New report highlights ways to improve birth registration in Indonesia
• Cambodia develops a national strategic plan of identification with CRVS focus
• The CRVS team at ESCAP is looking for an intern

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The purpose of this report is to compare the legal frameworks governing birth registration in eleven jurisdictions. Birth registration is the process by which a child's birth is recorded in the civil register by the applicable government authority. It provides the first legal recognition of the child. The questionnaires have been prepared by lawyers from the UK and other jurisdictions performing desk based research. The questionnaires focus on the registration of births occurring within the relevant jurisdiction.

Registration practices refer to all the actions that need to take place from the notification of an event, to its registration with the appropriate civil registry authorities, through to the issue of a certified document. Examples of best practice for birth and death registration include making it a legal requirement to register; no fee for registration; and clearly defining roles and responsibilities of various agents.

More than one-third of the indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals will require data from a CRVS system. As such, continued investments in CRVS are necessary to ensure countries can measure progress.

The Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS), Data for Health Initiative (D4H), at The University of Melbourne has developed an assessment tool to assess the quality of death certification practices through checking for the presence of common errors in death certificates. This can be used to assess the quality of death certification as part of routine assessment, or to assess the training needs of doctors in designing cause of death certification training.

This resolution calls for ESCAP to convene a regional intergovernmental ministerial meeting on CRVS in 2014. In addition, among other things, the resolution reiterates the call for countries to conduct assessments of CRVS systems, supports the Committee on Statistics’ endorsement of the Regional Strategic Plan for the Improvement of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics in the Asia and the Pacific, and requests ESCAP to establish a regional steering group on CRVS.

This is the report of the first meeting of National CRVS Steering and Coordination Committee held in Hotel Marriot- Islamabad and supported through WHO under its COIA initiative. Following were the main workshop objectives;
– To discuss the progress made for CRVS improvement and implementation of CRVS Strategic Plan.
– To urge the provincial and special area governments to notify their provincial steering and coordination committees so that national strategic direction could be translated.

Increasing demand for better quality data and more investment to strengthen civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems will require increased emphasis on objective, comparable, cost-effective monitoring and assessment methods to measure progress.

Through Commission resolution 69/15, countries in Asia and the Pacific requested that further regional action be taken to support the improvement of civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems. The regional action framework responds to that request as a catalyst for Governments and development partners to focus and accelerate their efforts to realize a shared vision and the three CRVS goals outlined in this document during the proposed civil registration and vital statistics decade for Asia and the Pacific (2015 to 2024).

Objective To analyse the design and operational status of India’s civil registration and vital statistics system and facilitate the system’s development into an accurate and reliable source of mortality data.

Well-functioning civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems are essential to evidenced-based policy planning for inclusive and sustainable development. This information brief provides an overview of the national CRVS systems in North and Central Asia (NCA), highlights the challenges faced by the subregion’s countries in terms of implementing international guidelines and recommends policy actions.

As part of the reporting structure of the Regional Action Framework on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) in Asia and the Pacific, by the end of 2015, members and associate members are required to submit a baseline report to the ESCAP Secretariat through their designated national focal point. This report is the provisional report submitted by Bangladesh.

This is a non-official document, for information only, prepared by the Working group of co-organizers of the Ministerial Conference on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics in Asia and the Pacific to be held in Bangkok, 24 November to 28 November 2014. It provides additional background information to delegations attending the Regional Preparatory Meeting for the Ministerial Conference on 28 and 29 August 2014.

StatsBrief underscores the importance of civil registration and vital statistics.

The Ministerial Declaration to "Get every one in the picture' in Asia and the Pacific was made at the Ministerial Conference on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics in Asia and the Pacific in November 2014.

This brochure provides a quick and basic introduction to civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS), highlighting its importance and the main players in CRVS systems. It also includes a snapshot of the CRVS in the Asia-Pacific region, with specific emphasis on national and regional initiatives to improve CRVS.

The detailed assessment tool reviews the main aspects of the civil registration and vital statistics systems. These include the legal and regulatory framework; registration, certification and coding practices; and the compilation, tabulation and use of the resulting data. The tool comprises both a roadmap, which outlines the main steps in conducting the review, starting with the formation of a review committee of key stakeholders, and an assessment framework, which serves as a template for the detailed review.

This training course on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) Systems has been prepared by the International Statistics Program at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. The course is intended to provide information to epidemiologists, statisticians, demographers, and others working in public health about vital statistics data gathered from a national civil registration system.

The point of entry of this document is to learn from what has already been done in many countries in the world, including Norway, Albania, Kazakhstan and Mozambique, and to present and discuss good practices to facilitate the process for countries embarking on a CRVS development process. The report also describes the specific role that potentially can be played by national statistical offices in CRVS development, both in building and maintaining registers as well as producing and disseminating data from the system.

This guideline deals with improving Civil Registration Systems and would supplement the UN manuals on the subject. Thus, this guideline is intended to assist national governments in general and CRVS organizations in particular for preparing national strategies and action plans for improving CRVS systems.

This course has been set up in response to the growing shortage of skilled population analysts in low and middle income countries, as identified by IUSSP and UNFPA, and the lack of post-graduate training in technical population analysis available to counteract this trend. The primary focus of this course is introducing the user to the methods used by demographers to analyse population data, and the sources of this data and the methods used to collect this data. Throughout the course, students are introduced to the types of issues of interest to demographers through real examples.

This document provides an overview of: CRVS in the African context, what is being done to improve CRVS systems in Africa, the benefits of CRVS, the major challenges, and the key elements are that constitute Civil Registration.

This Handbook provides guidance for developing national capability to operate and maintain, in a coordinated manner, the fundamental systems of civil registration and vital statistics. It contains course material, consisting of 23 modules that can be adapted to conduct an effective and comprehensive training on the essentials for civil registration and vital statistics systems. The modules addresses a range of issues related to the establishment, operation and maintenance of reliable civil registration and vital statistics systems.

This Handbook provides guidance to countries for the improvement of their civil registration and vital statistics systems and background and specifications for developing and establishing civil registration and vital statistics systems in countries that do not yet have such systems in place. The Handbook deals with essential components of structure, management, operation and maintenance functions to handle the entire range of vital events-live births, deaths, foetal deaths, marriages and dissolutions of marriage- from the civil registration and the vital statistics perspectives.

This Handbook supersedes the Handbook of Vital Statistics Methods published by the United Nations in 1955. It provides up-to-date guidance to countries to implement international recommendations adopted by the United Nations on vital statistics systems. Volume II, published in 1985, reviews national practices in civil registration and vital statistics systems and methods

The Global Plan for Scaling-up Civil Registration and Vital Statistics covers activities over a 10 year period from 2015 to 2024, with the goal of universal civil registration of births, deaths, marriages, and other vital events, including reporting cause of death, and access to legal proof of registration for all individuals by 2030.

This document highlights the importance of death registration in Africa and presents the status of death registration, what is currently being done and recommendations for improvement.

An assessment of the Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) system in Bangladesh was undertaken to identify gaps. Following this process, a CRVS Strategic Action Plan has also been developed. The activities were carried out from September 2012 to December 2013.

The value of good-quality mortality data for public health is widely acknowledged. While effective civil registration systems remains the ‘gold standard’ source for continuous mortality measurement, less than 25% of deaths are registered in most African countries. Alternative data collection systems can provide mortality data to complement those from civil registration, given an understanding of data source characteristics and data quality.