Civil registration is under the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice, through the Registrar’s General Office, who now works with the Ministry of Health to produce more accurate data.

A CRVS Committee was re-established in 2014, with representatives from the Ministries of Health, Justice, Internal Affairs, Finance, Education, Police, Elections Office, the Statistics Department, the National ID Office and the Courts, to build a better coordination and data sharing mechanism. In 2016, birth registration within one year of occurrence was estimated to be 96%, whereas it is only 58% for death registration in the same time period. The legally defined time limit for birth and death registration is 3 weeks, and a death registration is not necessary for funeral permit. A centralized database has been created to account for all events, and this digitalization process should move further with the e-Government World Bank funded project (2019-2024). Among other policies, the project will improve Tonga’s civil registration and national ID systems, ensuring that each Tongan citizen and resident is assigned a unique ID number at birth, that their legal identity can be authenticated for accessing services in-person and online, and that birth, death and marriage records are linked.

Like many countries in the Pacific region, Tonga faces difficulties in their CRVS system linked to the geography of its territory, made of scarcely populated islands, which has lead in the past to some problems, for example with natural disasters, islands’ records usually being transmitted to the central system on a yearly basis or less. The legal framework around civil registration, outdated, needs adaptation to newly emerging challenges or to up-to-date technological innovations. It started to be reviewed in 2016. The collaboration between agencies is also an important subject on the road to complete civil registration and has been one of the top objectives of the CRVS committee.