UNECA and African experts urge civil registration to enable good governance | Biometric Update

The two major topics discussed were the importance of data and ID management for planning Meeting of the Expert Group of the Sixth Conference of African Ministers Responsible for Civil Registration, recently held in Addis Ababa. The meeting of ministers has been postponed to January 2023 to allow more time for the results of the experts’ meeting.

“We realize that we are now talking about ID management,” said Oliver Chinganya, director of the Center for African Statistics at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). in press conference,

“So it’s this integration, strengthening citizen registration and ID management, which means citizen registration itself as a foundation, which means you collect data from children under the age of zero up to the time when a person does this. leaves the earth.”

While the meetings cover both the CR and VS of civil registration and vital statistics, this sixth meeting in Addis Ababa, a decade after the first in 2012, focused on civil registration.

host country EthiopiaExperts from the host organization African Union and UNECA and a co-group of networks of other United Nations agencies, the African Development Bank and world Bank Shows progress so far in civil registration and ideas for the future. They pass these on to ministers – all member states of the AU were in attendance – who then present the findings to their heads of state.

“It’s a governance issue,” Chinganya said, “citizen registration and vital statistics, it’s a governance issue because it talks about planning. You’re only able to plan if you know people who are being born, are registered, able to know how many of them are going to school.”

Chingnya presented the need for citizen registry information about the amount of drugs and vaccines needed as well as school locations for national planning: where, when and for how long. Citizen registration data is also a big part of the goals affecting Africa: the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the AU’s Agenda 2063.

“The data that informs the SDGs – the SDGs about not being left behind and being able to plan properly – 65 percent of that data is derived from citizen registration. So if we need citizen registration clearly and properly If you don’t get it, it means getting the SDG also becomes a problem because you don’t have the data.”

Chingnya says CR will only work if it is “functional, holistic, imperative.” COVID-19 exposed vulnerabilities in the system and created a distortion as both births and deaths went unregistered as people avoided contact with the authorities.

“Can we come up with a system that is flexible and agile to be able to respond to this? One way to do that is to digitize the system, which allows them to [registrars] To be able to collect information without being physically there,” said Chinganya, who expects strong recommendations from experts on interoperability and digitization in the system and to do away with the paperwork.

Chingnya also expects more cooperation and countries to learn from each other, such as from host Ethiopia which has made “good progress” in registration.

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Africa , biometrics , birth registration , civil Registry , digital id , identity management , United Nations