Civil registration and vital statistics

While global birth registration coverage has shown consistent improvement, some countries still lag behind. Particularly disadvantaged and vulnerable populations often remain unregistered, despite the increasing availability of services. Registering a birth is critical for the child’s opportunities later in life and for protection from harmful practices such as child marriage. 

Universal registration of deaths and medical certification of the cause of death, in technical terms, ends one's legal identity and status. Vital statistics produced from civil registration pertaining to death can inform understanding of health needs, and can spotlight, for example, global shortcomings in maternal health and gender-based violence, including femicide.
 
While birth and death are the life events that are registered most frequently, the registration of marriages – and divorces – often lags behind. Ensuring that a marriage is officially registered can secure, for example, parental custody, access to social protection, and inheritance rights or the legal claim to shared assets obtained during the marriage. It also enables a spouse to remarry, in the event of divorce or death of a partner. The timely registration of divorce is also critical for clarifying parental custody rights and asset distribution. 

Many women and girls remain systematically excluded from civil registration and as such are absent from vital statistics and the subsequent wide-ranging benefits. The lack of registration essentially renders them invisible, limits civil rights and protections, and increases risk of exposure to gender-based violence. 

Social, cultural and legal barriers to registration can exacerbate these inequalities and vulnerabilities. UNFPA has documented challenges faced by women in West, Central and Southern African countries to have their marriages officially registered with national authorities. Patrilineal inheritance customs and traditions, which stipulate the transfer of goods and status, primarily benefit men and often disincentivize the registration of female deaths, despite legal obligations to register them. Too often, women’s deaths remain absent from CRVS systems, leaving their stories in the shadows. Only with complete death registration, including medically certified cause of death, can gender-based violence and maternal mortality be fully understood. 

Global humanitarian need is ever increasing, and so is the demand for timely, accurate population data to inform emergency response and prevention. Life, including births, deaths, marriages and divorces, continues during emergencies. 

CRVS systems are instrumental for gathering the best available population data as part of overall preparedness, and the initial crucial stages of humanitarian response. The strengthening of CRVS systems is therefore essential to improving overall humanitarian preparedness and informing effective responses. 

The United Nations Population Fund supports the strengthening of national CRVS systems as a crucial piece of the organization’s larger data portfolio, as it complements decades-long support for censuses and surveys and expertise in geospatial information. Robust CRVS systems and high-quality census data are mutually reinforcing, as CRVS data can be used to assess the quality of census data and vice versa, leading to stronger national data systems overall. 

UNFPA, through its Centre of Excellence for Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Systems (CoE-CRVS), works to strengthen civil registration and vital statistics systems everywhere and in all contexts, ensuring that everyone is counted and accounted for, from birth to death, through marriage and, if necessary, divorce, and throughout other life events.

UNFPA’s hosting of the CoE-CRVS combines UNFPA’s global reach, technical expertise in population data and track record in women’s empowerment with the thought leadership of the CoE-CRVS in the strengthening of CRVS systems. The CoE-CRVS supports cutting-edge research to inform innovative, evidence-based solutions and overall capacity development in the CRVS field. 

Updated on 25 July 2023