UNFPA and its Centre of Excellence for CRVS Systems, in collaboration with IDRC, Canada, the Global Financing Facility for Women, Children, and Adolescent’s, UNICEF, UNECA, and Open Data Watch hosted the 4th Global CRVS and Gender Symposium in Nairobi, Kenya between 15-17 October 2025. The event brought together 114 participants from 42 countries, representing governments, UN entities, development partners, academia and civil society organizations. The symposium background Paper, Making Everyone Count: Advancing Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment through Inclusive CRVS Systems, situated CRVS strengthening as a human rights imperative to the Sustainable Development Goals.

The 3-day symposium centred around 7 key action themes: 

(i) strategically framing CRVS system strengthening around a life course approach via a gender lens; 

(ii) consolidating the multiple CRVS assessment frameworks and tools, 

(iii) expanding inequality assessments, 

(iv) advancing data systems integration underpinned by human rights principles, 

(v) expanding data usage of CRVS data, 

(vi) promoting a culture of implementation science and operations research across CRVS systems scale-up efforts, and 

(vi) joining up financing and coordination of CRVS systems efforts, especially with the private sector and local community groups. 

In the coming weeks, the slides and plenary session video recordings from the 4th Global CRVS and Gender Symposium will be posted to the symposium portal: www.crvs-gender.com. An updated discussion paper that synthesizes the core messages and key follow-up actions will also be released in early December.     

(Photo credit: UNFPA)