The Vanuatu CRVS system is part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It also relies on the Health Information System for birth or death happening in Health facilities. However, 70% of the population live in the Rural areas, some of which live in traditional lifestyles and have little interaction with government or health facilities. Besides, the different departments involved struggle to share data and rely on families to provide the appropriate information to each of them. This is even problematic considering the barrier in hindering people due to the cost of travelling to a registered center. This leads to a poor CRVS situation, with UNICEF estimating in 2008 the percentage of children living in Vanuatu whose birth had been registered to be 26%.

To tackle this problem, a CRVS task force has been installed, and in a few years, Vanuatu has greatly improved birth registration. This was mainly achieved through partnerships with the Ministry of Health, enforcing the registration of new births at hospital prior to discharge, and with the Ministry of Education, integrating the registration of children through schools as part of their initial enrolment process. “Catch-up days” in remote areas that do not have regular contact with government have also been established. These activities have been supported by the roll-out of IT connectivity to provincial centers and the development of a national CRVS database. These activities have led to a 2012-2014 birth registration completeness estimate of 83.2%, and death registration completeness estimate of 52%.

The key lessons identified by Vanuatu in the implementation of these programs are the importance of using decentralization and existing contact points with government to bring registration to communities, that a strong IT infrastructure is important to supporting expansion of registration activities, and that multi‐sectoral cooperation is key for CRVS improvements.