The authority responsible for civil registration in Nauru is the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages. Through a national CRVS committee formed in 2011 with stakeholders from the Department of Health, the Government Registration Office, the Bureau of Statistics, producer of the vital statistics, the Planning Aid Division Office and the Information Technology and Communication (ICT), a strong collaboration and data sharing has been implemented.  This collaboration was formalized via a new legislative frame for CRVS in 2018, defining the roles of CRVS stakeholders, and giving the director of Medical Services the responsibility to notify the registrar’s office any death at the Nauruan hospital immediately, and any birth within 7 days. Families are still required to formally register the events through the registrar’s office, and they have 21 days to do so for births.

Birth Registration is estimated to be 90 to 95% complete within 1 year of birth, and 70 % of the total population is estimated to have had their birth registered. Death Registration is estimated to be 95% complete within 1 year of death. However, those estimates are quite hard to produce and prone to large  variation considering the small size of the population of 11,000. Nauru has essentially complete registration of births and deaths, , in part due to the funeral assistance payments and a child payment at birth which are linked to formal registration.

The challenges faced by this small island country include the registration system backup, as shown in 2013 with the destruction of some of the records in the fire of the only hospital. The quality of coding in general, and of cause of death coding in particular also needs improvement to produce more easily vital statistics report featuring more accurate information.