1 United Nations Expert Group Meeting on International Standards for Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Systems June 2011, New York, USA Population Register as Source of Vital Statistics – Issues for Discussion Genene Bizuneh African Development Bank and African Centre for Statistics, UNECA

2 Population register – its purpose: Primary purpose is to provide data and information for administration and statistics Population register – what is it?? A database system Uses other data sources to continuously update the variables in the register Do not engage in field level data collection, rather links to other data sources Purpose

3 Population Register (at the minimum) = civil registration + migration information Civil registration data in the Population Register needs continuous updating Migration refers to both internal and international – requires continuous flow of information What it composes

4 Population register won’t replace civil registration – their linkage simply is – that the latter feeds data to the former Countries with inadequate civil registration system need to work first on improving their civil registration system – a prerequisite to move to population register initiative Population register to serve as source of vital statistics will highly depend on the level of completeness of civil registration system Linkages with civil registration

5 Planning for Population Register without migration would not bring much added value Maintaining a well-functioning Population Register requires highly developed public administration infrastructure, including IT infrastructure Moving towards Population Register at this point in the African region is not timely. Way forward

6 Thank you