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Bangkok - 07 Jan 2021

  • A series webinars and EGM meetings
  • Opens to public for webinars and by Invitation for EGM meetings

A well-functioning civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) system helps to ensure that every person has a legal identity, facilitating access to the benefits and protections of the State. Despite national and universal efforts to “get every one in the picture”, disparities in coverage of hard-to-reach and marginalized populations remain. Therefore, the Regional Action Framework on CRVS goes beyond the measurement of civil registration completeness at the national level and includes inequality assessment as part of the essential tools for achieving universal and well-functioning civil registration systems.

While many countries expressed willingness to undertake inequality assessments, they often struggle to understand how these should be undertaken, especially where capacity is low. In particular, the assessment of inequalities in death registration is weak compared with birth registration for which more information tends to be available. The COVID-19 pandemic and the disparities in its impact have highlighted the importance of death registration to be able to measure and report on this. The pandemic underscored the importance of ensuring that the CRVS along with inequality assessments, are strengthened and improved, to respond better to any future pandemic, and have a better understanding of the ensuing mortality and morbidity.  

Cognizant of the importance of measuring inequality in the CRVS systems, the ESCAP Statistics Division in collaboration with international and national organizations, will be organizing a series of webinars and Expert Group Meetings (EGM) on inequality assessments for CRVS systems. With the overarching theme, “Inequalities in CRVS: Let’s really get every one in the picture!”, the ultimate aim of these activities is to provide practical and clear guidance for countries in Asia and the Pacific on measuring the inequalities in CRVS with the ultimate goal to narrow the gap in civil registration.

The webinars and EGMs will be organized based on three areas where progress can be made to support inequality assessments (date and time will be announced soon):

  1. Qualitative assessments and the Bali Process Toolkit
  2. Using secondary sources to assess inequality in civil registration
  3. Guidance on Indirect Demographic Methods for Measuring Completeness and Coverage for Low-Capacity Countries

Each webinar will be followed by an EGM.  Participation in the webinar will be open to anyone who are interested in learning more about inequality assessments in CRVS systems.  The EGM will be a closed meeting of invited experts which would synthesize and develop the material and discussions from the webinar. Each EGM will prepare summary information that will serve as inputs to the report which basically aims to provide practical guidance to countries on how to better assess completeness and coverage to inform inequality assessments.

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