Abhatoo - Centre Nationale de Documentation

The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) placed birth and death registration firmly on the international development agenda. Two targets are dedicated; target 16.9 for providing legal identity for all, including birth registration. This is in addition to target 17.9, which calls for support in building the statistical capacity needed for strong national civil registration systems and achieving universal coverage for birth registration and 80% for death registration, as well as strengthening the statistical capacity for producing and publishing reliable data.
Moreover, UNFPA ASRO is seeking to strengthen the civil registry capacity in the Arab countries to achieve full coverage of vital events registration to guarantee the individuals rights, as well as to enhance the capacity to produce and disseminate vital statistics. Whereas, the ICPD Programme of Actions dedicate chapter No. 12 to stress the importance of valid, reliable, timely, culturally relevant and internationally comparable population data, including vital statistics for policy and programme development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.1 The same affirmation was stipulated in the Nairobi Summit, the Cairo Declaration and other international conventions.
This report seeks to assess the quality and efficiency of the civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) system in Arab countries, with the aim of highlighting the challenges facing the system and assisting countries in setting their priorities for improving the system functionality, in addition to producing and disseminating vital statistics that help in formulating the population and development policies.
The assessment reveals disparities between Arab countries regarding the efficiency of their civil registration system, as well as the quality and level of utilization and the dissemination of vital statistics. While a number of Arab countries vary from wellfunctioning and efficient CRVS system (such as GCC countries), to weak such as Somalia, Djibouti. (See Annexe 3)
The assessment highlights the main challenges that weakened the efficiency of the registration system in the Arab countries which are :
• Outdated and inadequate legal frameworks governing civil registration and vital statistics
• Lack of individual and societal awareness of the importance of births and deaths registration
• Lack of coordination between governmental departments
• Infrastructure and Human resource skills and capacity gaps
• Persistent barriers to access registration services
• Deaths are not universally or routinely registered, and the causes of death are not usually certified and documented.
• Poor quality assurance which limits the accuracy and reliability of vital statistics
• Data lack of utilization and dissemination vital statistics a quality and dissemination issues
Moreover, the report demonstrates the challenges facing refugees and IDPs to register their vital events during conflicts and humanitarian crises. A set of policy actions are recommended in the report for strengthening the civil registration system efficiency, improving the capacity in the generation, as well as disseminating, and using vital statistics in development.