(Newsletter: CRVS Insight August 2018)

The UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia (UNICEF-ROSA) and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) are organizing a meeting of the Civil Registrars of South Asia to discuss common challenges, share innovative practices and explore potential collaboration. The meeting will be held in Kathmandu, Nepal from 24-25 July 2018.

Well-functioning civil registration is recognized as the foundation for ensuring that no one is left behind in the efforts to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include explicit targets on birth and death registration (SDG 16.9 and 17.19). In South Asia, Governments have committed to concerted efforts to improve civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems through the Ministerial Declaration to “Get every one in the picture”, during the Asia-Pacific CRVS Decade, 2015-2024.

This meeting will bring together civil registrars in South Asia to discuss priority areas of common concern including national CRVS coordination mechanisms, cross-border collaboration between civil registries, and the relationship between civil registration and civil identification. The meeting will also explore potential areas and mechanisms of collaboration, including the possibility of establishing a professional network of civil registrars.

The discussions and conclusion of meeting will feed into the mid-term review of the Regional Action Framework on CRVS in Asia and the Pacific, which will be considered at the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on CRVS in 2020.