Advancing legal identity,gender equity and women's empowerment via inclusive civil registration and vital statistics systems

Abstract

The 2030 Agenda recognizes universal legal identity, gender equity, and women's empowerment as essential for the realization of sustainable development, particularly in Goals 5, 16, and 17. This paper reviews the progress, key achievements, and ongoing challenges in developing legal identity systems that are universal and gender transformative. It highlights the strategic importance of inclusive civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems as a tool in advancing gender equity and women's empowerment. Significant advances include increased birth registration coverage, the integration of marriage and divorce registration into legal ID systems, and efforts to reduce disparities in death registration by sex and socioeconomic status. The paper also explores the evolution of the CRVS data ecosystem, technical guidance, and CRVS data usage to advance sustainable development over the past 15 years, which have bolstered investment and technical cooperation in gender data for development. It highlights the critical role of civil registration and vital statistics systems in measuring and monitoring sustainable development indicators and promoting gender equity and women's empowerment. Despite progress, challenges remain in closing gender and social disparities in legal identity systems. The paper highlights promising cases of how CRVS systems have been harnessed to advance sustainable development and notes opportunities for further scaling CRVS systems strengthening efforts. It concludes by reflecting on the importance of counting everyone, because everyone counts, and the need for continued efforts to support and expand human capabilities for all.