The second meeting of the South-East Asia Civil Registration Professionals Network (SEA CRN) was held from 14 to 16 January 2025 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. ESCAP co-organized the meeting alongside CDC Foundation, UNFPA, and Vital Strategies, with Cambodia’s General Department of Identification (GDI) as the host. The Director General of GDI and UN Resident Coordinator in Cambodia opened the meeting, and over 85 participants were in attendance. The meeting brought together civil registration professionals from 10 South-East Asian countries and Papua New Guinea to share experiences on areas of common priorities, identify focus areas and ways of working for the SEA CRN moving forward, and prepare for the Third Ministerial Conference on CRVS in Asia and the Pacific. The three-day meeting included a half-day field visit to the sub-regional, commune-level health centre and civil registration office to learn about the notification and registration processes of vital events at the local level in Cambodia.

At the end of the meeting, participants agreed to participate in quarterly virtual meetings to share progress and learn from their peers. A South-East Asia sub-regional forum is being planned for 23 June 2025 as an associated event to the Third Ministerial Conference on CRVS in Asia and the Pacific.

For more information on the meeting including meeting materials, please refer to this link.