• 2025 review of CRVS progress in Asia and the Pacific

    Members and Associate Members of ESCAP are currently undertaking a review of their progress since the inception of the Asia Pacific CRVS Decade in 2014. A questionnaire has been distributed to National CRVS focal points and should be returned to ESCAP by 15 September.

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  • 2024 Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Applied Research Training Initiative

    The CRVS applied research training (CART) initiative focuses on enhancing CRVS systems through supporting applied research on strategies, interventions, and tools. This involves designing projects to address practical questions, employing robust methodologies, and identifying key personnel for effective implementation and publication. The need to strengthen practitioners' research capacity is evident, as highlighted in the Asia-Pacific CRVS research forum held in 2023. 

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  • Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Systems Improvement Framework

    To meet the targets of the CRVS Decade, a Business Process Improvement approach can help improve and streamline Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) system. The CRVS Systems Improvement Framework help CRVS stakeholders assess, analyze and redesign, to improve user experience and produce timely vital statistics. 

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  • Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Inequality Assessments

    The Ministerial Declaration on CRVS in Asia and the Pacific emphasizes the need to address CRVS inequalities among hard-to-reach and marginalized populations, promoting universality and equity in civil registration regardless of factors such as gender, religion, or ethnicity. Countries are encouraged to conduct assessments to assess where such inequalities may exist.

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Follow CRVS news in Asia and the Pacific by subscribing to the CRVS Insight Newsletter

The CRVS community in Asia and the Pacific has reflected on where it stands at the midpoint of the CRVS Decade (2015-2024) during the Second Ministerial Conference. Following this celebration of progress, many of our partners and member countries are leading actions to fill the remaining gaps.

To learn more about CRVS in Asia and the Pacific, please subscribe to our newsletter, which offers a monthly panorama of CRVS actions throughout the region

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Read the midterm report

 

UNICEF releases videos on birth registration in Kiribati, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands

UNICEF has just published three videos on birth registration in the Pacific. The videos highlight the different challenges as well as some of the common solutions. The video on the left explains the Kiribati government's plans to decentralize civil registration services to all provinces and expand the number of service points and agencies with authority to provide civil registration.

New CDC training course on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Systems

The International Statistics Program at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has developed a training course on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) systems 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 course contains a general description of the administrative process of civil registration and fundamentals of vital statistics generated from a national civil registration system.

Government Commitment

The regional governments and CRVS partners shared vision is that, by 2024, all people in Asia and the Pacific will benefit from universal and responsive CRVS systems that facilitate the realization of their rights and support good governance, health and development.   Political commitment at the highest levels play an essential role in ensuring that relevant government stakeholders unify around a single comprehensive multisectoral national CRVS strategy. (Image: © UN ESCAP 2014)

Asian and Pacific Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Decade (2015 - 2024)

The Asian and Pacific CRVS Decade (2015-2024) was proclaimed at the Ministerial Conference on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) in Asia and the Pacific, which was held in November 2014 in Bangkok.  At that meeting Governments also adopted the Ministerial Declaration to “Get Every One in the Picture” in Asia and the Pacific and made a commitment to focus their efforts to improve CRVS systems.  Through the declaration of the Asian and Pacific CRVS Decade, governments gave a timeframe of 2015-2024, for all people in Asia and the Pacific to benefit from universal and responsive CRVS systems that facilitate the realization of their rights and support good governance, health and development. (image: © UN ESCAP 2014)

President declares 2015-2024 as CRVS decade in Philippines

President Benigno Aquino III officially declared the years 2015 to 2024 as the “civil registration and vital statistics decade” in the Philippines. In the declaration, President Aquino urged all relevant national government agencies – namely health, civil registration and statistics - to strengthen and improve civil registration and vital statistics activities.

Civil registration systems and vital statistics: successes and missed opportunities

This paper was published in 2007 as a part of the “The Who Counts?” Series of The Lancet. The authors Mahapatra et. al review the present situation and past trends of vital statistics in the world. Vital statistics generated through civil registration systems are the major source of continuous monitoring of births and deaths over time. The usefulness of vital statistics depends on their quality. In the second paper in this Series we propose a comprehensive and practical framework for assessment of the quality of vital statistics. With use of routine reports to the UN and cause-of-death data reported to WHO, the authors review the present situation and past trends of vital statistics in the world and note little improvement in worldwide availability of general vital statistics or cause-of-death statistics. Only a few developing countries have been able to improve their civil registration and vital statistics systems in the past 50 years. International efforts to improve comparability of vital statistics seem to be effective, and there is reasonable progress in collection and publication of data. However, worldwide efforts to improve data have been limited to sporadic and short-term measures. The authors conclude that countries and developmental partners have not recognized that civil registration systems are a priority. The key messages of the paper are: Vital statistics derived from civil registration systems are global public goods that governments of developing countries and development partners need for generation of comprehensive and detailed health outcome data, which are a key component of building the evidence base for health improvement Worldwide civil registration systems have largely stagnated, during the past five decades, in terms of their vital statistics potential Systematic evaluation studies and comprehensive assessments of the state of civil registration systems in various countries and regions of the world are rarely done, but they are essential to guide the use of vital statistics Various international efforts and programs have succeeded in setting standards for comparability and publications for easier access, but such efforts have been largely unsuccessful in the development of civil registration systems for vital statistics at a national level This paper was published as a part of the “The Who Counts?” Series of The Lancet. The Series analyzes the 'scandal of invisibility', which means that millions of human beings are born and die without leaving any record of their existence. This has been caused by the lack or inadequacy of civil registration systems for counting births, deaths, and causes of death, leaving countries powerless to track, and, in turn, protect the wellbeing of their populations. The Series, produced in collaboration with the Health Metrics Network at the World Health Organization (WHO) and specialists from around the world, explores how these vital statistics are essential to health policy formation, in both the developed and developing world. Ways forward for countries in the worst circumstances regarding their civil registration systems are also proposed.  

Fact Sheet: CRVS Systems as a foundation for human rights

In preparation for the Ministerial Conference on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics in Asia and the Pacific a fact sheet on civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems as a foundation for human rights was published by the Brisbane Accord Group. The right to recognition as a person before the law was first acknowledged in Article 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and the right of a child to be registered immediately after birth was specifically recognized in Article 24 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966). The declaration and covenant are further reinforced by the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (1990). The Information note covers how civil registration supports different aspects of human rights such as: Access to education Right to vote and be elected Access to services Right to nationality Protection from harm Right to marry, and protection from child marriage Right to health Prevention of child labor and other specific protections for children Vital statistics for planning and good governance Ability to inherit property More information notes can be found here

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