It has been described as the most critical development failure of the past 30 years, and shows no sign of improving: many countries’ systems for registering major life events like births and deaths are incomplete or absent.
In 2007, the Lancet described the situation as follows: “Most people in Africa and Asia, and in many other regions, are born and die without leaving a trace in any legal record or official statistic.” A followup series in 2015 identified a continued lack of political will to improve the situation. Registration of major life events is fundamental to human security and development, but 65 percent of deaths and 35 percent of births remain unrecorded across the world.
Civil registration refers to the continuous recording all vital life events in a population (also including marriages and divorces). It brings benefits for everyone. It provides citizens with the legal documents that allow them to protect rights like identity, citizenship and property; enabling them to make claims for public goods such as housing, employment, health care, and justice. It helps to protect people, especially the vulnerable, from harm and exploitation in times of disaster or conflict, as well as from human trafficking and child labor. And it ensures that countries’ vital statistics are available for those that need to see them.
A Health Essential
Registering medical causes of deaths has also long been considered essential for the health of a population. The fact that more than half of all deaths worldwide go unregistered seriously limits the capacity of national health systems to deliver services that respond to the needs of their population. And poor countries are by far the worst affected: governments struggle to establish proper systems and donors often prefer to invest in interventions targeting specific health problems, such as vaccines, bed nets, clean birth kits, and so forth.
Civil registration also plays an important role in helping development agencies monitor policies and programs. Last month, the world agreed on 17 goals for sustainable development to continue the Millennium Development Goals beyond the 2015 deadline. An aspirational vision of global health and development this may be, but it will fail those it seeks to service if its success is judged on indicators that countries don’t measure.
