CRVS Insight

July 2020

 New dates for the Second Ministerial Conference on CRVS in Asia and the Pacific

The Second Ministerial Conference on CRVS in Asia and the Pacific was postponed due to the ongoing issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. We are happy to announce that the Second Conference is now scheduled for 16 - 19 November 2021.

In the build up to the new dates, the CRVS team released the interim midterm report, which will also be followed by the Asian and Pacific CRVS Decade (2015-2024) Midterm Report, as well as a micro-site illustrating Regional Action Framework progress, webinars and background papers developed with CRVS partners. You can follow the preparations for the conference on www.getinthepicture.org.

23 July, 2020 - 12:00 - 1:00 p.m (Bangkok)

Stats Café on COVID-19 and mortality statistics

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the need for reliable and timely mortality statistics into sharp focus. Knowing how many people are dying and where they are is essential to tracking the virus’ spread and determining its impact. And while this sounds simple, COVID-19 also exposed deep and pervasive gaps in death registration systems in Asia and the Pacific, especially in low-income countries.

The upcoming seventh session of the Asia-Pacific Stats Café will look at how deaths, including causes of death, are being monitored and reported during the pandemic, and whether it involved changes to the health information system. The session will also discuss how the information about deaths and causes of death is being shared with the civil registration authorities and used for the production of vital statistics. Speakers from WHO, Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Department of Public Health in Sri Lanka will present at the event.

Register for the Stats Café HERE  

A new blog authored by staff members at the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data and ESCAP also sheds light on how uncounted deaths can obscure COVID-19's gendered impact.

Civil Registration Professionals of South Asia (CR8) release compendium on civil registration practices in the region

The Civil Registration Professionals of South Asia (CR8) is a network dedicated to improving the national CRVS systems. To collaborate on common, cross-border issues and share lessons learned, the group first convened in July 2018 to discuss three common areas of concern in all countries in South Asia — national coordination, cross-border collaboration, and the relationship between civil registration and civil identification.

The present publication builds on the success of that first meeting and expands on the conversations from the second meeting, 26 – 28 November 2019, in Maldives. While the 2018 compendium of papers laid the groundwork for Coordination, Connections and Collaboration, the present papers review legislative frameworks, marriage and divorce registration, and strengthening the use of ICT in civil registration.

To download a copy of Regulations, Relationships and the Role of ICT, please visit www.getinthepicture.org. And to read the recent blog post launching the compendium, please visit either ESCAP or UNICEF ROSA.

UNICEF to host a webinar on global birth registration progress 

Based on data from 174 countries, the UNICEF report, Birth Registration for Every Child by 2030: Are we on track? shows that 166 million children under-5, or 1 in 4, remain unregistered today. And even when they are registered, they may not have proof of registration – an estimated 237 million children under age 5 worldwide are currently without a birth certificate.

Moreover, nearly 1 in 3 countries – accounting for around a third of the global population of children under the age of five – will need to urgently speed up progress in order to meet the SDG 16.9 target of providing legal identity for all, including birth registration. This includes many countries in Asia and the Pacific.

On 30 July 2020, from 8:00-9:30 EST (New York), UNICEF is hosting a webinar to provide an opportunity for participants to learn more about the report’s findings and discuss programmatic implications. (Dial-in details can be found below).

Join from a PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone or Android device: https://unicef.zoom.us/s/99278458178 (Password: 559112).

Or join by phone: Dial (for higher quality, dial a number based on your current location).

International numbers available: https://unicef.zoom.us/u/ac8RGU4NaA (Webinar ID: 992 7845 8178); (Password: 559112)

Pakistan takes action to improve CRVS and reduce social impacts of COVID-19

The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors recently approved a $500 million program to help Pakistan improve services, including civil registration and vital statistics, access to quality healthcare and education, as well as support economic opportunities for women, and strengthen social safety nets as the country braces to limit the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Securing Human Investments to Foster Transformation (SHIFT) program will support policy reforms to help Pakistan’s COVID-19 emergency response and protect human capital investments. It will support greater coordination between provinces and federal authorities to immunize millions of children and reduce their risks of contracting polio and other diseases. SHIFT also improves civil registration and vital statistics to target safety net programs that will benefit 12 million people impacted by the COVID-19 crisis, both at the federal and provincial levels.

To read more about this new program, please follow the hyperlink to read through the project documents.

Dear Reader

The ESCAP CRVS team is committed to bringing you relevant and insightful content on www.getinthepicture.org and through the CRVS Insight newsletter. However, our content is dependent upon your stories and visuals to illustrate national CRVS system developments around Asia-Pacific.

As a result, we need your help in building our network and raising awareness of what's happening. When a development occurs in your country, please remember to draft a short article and send it to us with an accompanying photo.

Just as a few examples, did stakeholders from your national coordination mechanism meet recently, or will they meet soon? Did you change your registration forms or processes? Or, did your Ministry of Health recently invest in upgrading birth notification software? Or, did you If so, please send us a 100-200 word article and a photo. We would be delighted to share your progress with our 1,500+ readers.

UPCOMING EVENTS

As part of The World Bank’s Mission Billion Challenge efforts to focus on gender inclusion as part of this year’s Global Prize, the World Bank will soon host a webinar on Empowering Women and Girls: Realizing the Potential for ID by Addressing the Gender Gap on 21 July at 9:00 a.m. (EST/Washington, DC). Interested participants can register here.

On 23 July, from 14:30 - 16:00 (CET/Paris time), ID4 Africa will host a webinar entitled "Spotlight on Unique Digital Identity Numbers" to discuss how identity numbers have been driven to the forefront of Africa's digital identity movement, particularly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Interested participants can register here.

Between 30 July - 17 September, The World Bank Group's Open Learning Campus will host a four-week webinar entitled "Digital Identity for the Underserved" where policymakers, academics and others will focus on the link between policies and inclusion, as well as good practices for digital transformation. Interested participants can read more about the course and enroll here. 

NEW RESOURCES

Every year, the Bureau of Demographic and Migration Statistics in Iran releases the statistics of vital events. This year, the release was concurrent with the World Population Day (11 July), and can be accessed here.

Readers who were unable to participate in the IDRC's ConVERGE Conference 2020 back in February can now access video of all live-streamed sessions, as well as the English version of the Conference Outcome Document.

Video from ESCAP's Stats Café series can be found by visiting the Asia-Pacific Stats Café Series website. Each webinar is organised in collaboration with relevant development partners and countries.

As we are always looking to improve content, we’d love to hear your feedback and your inputs for articles. CRVS Insight is written for you, and your opinion matters most to us!

If you have a new resource, upcoming event or article you would like highlighted, please send submissions with an accompanying photo to escap-crvs@un.org.

Please note by submitting photos you are granting ESCAP Statistics Division to publish the photo in the current article and any future articles it deems appropriate.

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