Human Rights Practitioners Cannot Be Left Behind: Engaging in Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) Systems Thinking for Country Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goal Agenda

Abstract

With the support of the private sector, civil society, philanthropic organizations and communities, governments from developed and developing nations around the world are scaling up their implementation efforts for achieving the bold and transformative vision of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The importance of death registration and certification, and the power of cause of death data, is increasingly discussed in high-level multilateral and bilateral forums in relation to country monitoring and measurement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which were agreed upon by the UN member states at a high-level summit in September 2015 to replace the Millennium Development Goals on their December 2015 expiration. Routinely, however, human rights and development practitioners are removed from these important multi-stakeholder conversations on civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) system strengthening occurring at global, national, and subnational levels. This article will therefore explain why such practitioners might not have traditionally engaged in CRVS-related discussion in the past but must urgently engage now. Indeed, both the positives and negatives of SDG–CRVS system improvement, combined with the escalating need for human rights-based approaches to data and technology, will necessitate involvement from human rights advocates and scholars worldwide in the coming decade and beyond.