The child who is not registered at birth is in danger of being shut out of society – denied the right to an official identity, a recognized name and a nationality. This Digest examines the situation of children who are denied a fundamental human right and who, in legal terms, do not exist. This Digest has three aims. First, to emphasize the value of birth registration. Second, to explore the obstacles to universal registration. Third, to identify the action needed to bring about universal birth registration.

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 objective of this publication is to analyze the legal, administrative, and technological requirements for the use of information and communications technology (ICT) for birth registration. The intended audience includes civil registry agencies or those countries that are considering the introduction of ICT, as well as those that already have the system in place.

This resource is a joint IUSSP and UNFPA project to produce a single volume containing updated tools for demographic estimation from limited, deficient and defective data.

The Roadmap articulates a shared strategic approach to support effective measurement and accountability systems for a country’s health programs. The Roadmap outlines smart investments that countries can adopt to strengthen basic measurement systems and to align partners and donors around common priorities. It offers a platform for development partners, technical experts, implementers, civil society organizations, and decision makers to work together for health measurement in the post-2015 era.

The objective of this study is to present available empirical evidence obtained through household surveys in order to estimate levels of registration and to understand which factors are associated with children who obtain a birth certificate, and thus realize their right to a name and legal identity. The paper presents a global assessment of birth registration levels, differentials in birth registration rates according to socio-economic and demographic variables, proximate variables and caretaker knowledge, as well as a multivariate analysis.

This Guidance document has been prepared by the Health Information Systems Knowledge Hub at the University of Queensland (HIS Hub). It is intended to assist those countries that have undertaken a comprehensive assessment of their Civil Registration and Vital Statistics systems (CRVS) using the WHO/ UQ assessment tool (1) to transition from assessment results to a strategic improvement plan. The document describes processes and steps that national managers of the CRVS systems can take after they have completed the comprehensive assessment with all relevant stakeholders.

As Members and associate members prepare to set their own national targets for the CRVS Decade, ESCAP and partners have developed a set of guidelines to assist countries in this process. 

The present strategic planning guide has been compiled to assist countries with the development of a civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) strategic plan and work programme following a comprehensive assessment process. A strategic management process model is proposed that outlines four distinct phases, namely: (i) strategy analysis; (ii) strategy formulation; (iii) strategy implementation; and (iv) strategy review. The guide outlines the processes and steps to be followed, together with supportive templates to be completed in each phase.

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.