On the 18th and 19th of January 2018 the third meeting of the Bali Process Civil Registration Assessment Toolkit Technical Advisory Group took place in Bangkok. The purpose of the meeting was first, to undertake a technical review of the toolkit and secondly, to elaborate a program for the piloting of a part of the toolkit methodology within the Civil Registration administration of a Bali Process Member State. The purpose of the Toolkit is to help States improve how they register births, deaths and marriages of key populations (refugees, asylum seekers, stateless persons and persons of undetermined nationality) that occur on their territory. The overall goal of the Toolkit is to enable better protection and contribute to durable solutions for key populations by increasing levels of civil registration and documentation completeness among these population groups. The toolkit will contain a practical assessment methodology for States to identify gaps and barriers, as well as relevant technical and policy guidance based on international standards, recommendations and good practices, to support improvement efforts. The toolkit is expected to be published in the second half of 2018, and will include a pilot in one or more States in 2018. The technical advisory group has been established to review technical and policy aspects of the civil registration among key populations, in order to inform and oversee the development of the toolkit to ensure that it is relevant and actionable by Bali Process member states. The Regional Support Office (RSO) of the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime was established in 2012 to facilitate the work of the Regional Cooperation Framework that was endorsed by the Fourth Bali Process Regional Ministerial Conference in March 2011. The RSO aims to support and strengthen practical cooperation on refugee protection and international migration, including human trafficking and smuggling, border management, and other components of migration management in Asia and the Pacific.

The Vietnamese government has included CRVS improvements as an integral part of the National Action Plan for the implementation of the 2030 sustainable development agenda. The aim is to provide legal identification including birth registration by 2030 for all citizens in Vietnam. Particular attention will be paid to individuals living in mountainous regions, ethnic minorities and migrant people. Part of the measures to achieve this goal is the development and operation of an electronic civil status database in all registration offices. The full National Action Plan can be found here.

19 island countries in the Pacific are working together to build a single civil registration network, so that data on vital events are accurately captured and shared across their borders. The work of the Pacific Civil Registrars Network (PCRN) was featured on the website of GovInsider, a platform for public sector innovation. Pacific islanders are often highly mobile, meaning that they are born in one country and often migrate for jobs, healthcare and education, and die in another country, says Jeff Montgomery, New Zealand’s Registrar-General and GM of Births, Deaths, Marriages, Citizenship and Translations. As a result these events are registered as separate events in different countries and not linked up. According to Montgomery this creates inaccurate datasets for government planning. Therefore the 19 island countries in the Pacific are working together to build a single civil registration network, so that data on these vital events are accurately captured and shared across their borders. When complete, the Pacific civil registration network could neaten up loose ends left behind when an islander passes on. “If you die in one country but were born in another, your death will be notified to the birth country and therefore your birth certificate can be closed, your passport can be canceled, and your health information can be used for planning purposes,” Montgomery explains. The network is still in its early stages. Montgomery hopes to use cloud-based software for sharing data between governments in the future. This could be advantageous for smaller countries that may not have the resources to support their own online system. New Zealand has already established four data sharing agreements, either in place or in the final stages of drafting – with New South Wales in Australia, and the Cook Islands, Tokelau and Niue in the Pacific.

A CRVS Knowledge Gateway (www.crvsgateway.info) has been launched. The Gateway provides technical tools, evidence-based information and country experiences for people working in health, information systems and government in low- and middle-income countries that are offered for free in an approachable and user-friendly way. The Gateway and the majority of resources were developed by the University of Melbourne as part of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health Initiative. Watch this video to see it in action, or visit www.crvsgateway.info to explore the CRVS Knowledge Gateway for yourself.