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Issues and Innovations in Population Data Collection and Measurement: Registration and Administrative Data

POPULATION AND DEMOGRAPHIC DATA ON FORCIBLY DISPLACED PERSONS

Romesh Silva (United Nations Population Fund) noted that, over the last several decades, statistics on refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) have come largely from operational humanitarian data. The idea has been to get data quickly that can inform immediate humanitarian decision

making and action. For example, data have come from quick snapshot situational reports and online portals run by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

However, the numbers of IDPs and refugees have been increasing in recent years. Furthermore, according to Silva, most of the world’s refugees, approximately 85 percent, are hosted in developing countries, with one-third of them in the world’s least developed countries. (See also summary of the presentation by Michaela Hynie in Chapter 2.) These countries tend to have weaker national statistical systems, which poses challenges in measuring vulnerable populations such as refugees and IDPs.

Silva indicated that a strategic pivot in the area of refugee and IDP statistics has occurred recently from operational to official statistics. In the latter case, the idea is to have a clear legal basis and technical guidelines around data, measurement, and dissemination standards. Much more attention is given to harmonization, validation, reliability, timeliness, and quality metrics established in official statistics practice, with data sources including censuses, household surveys, and administrative registers.

In the past, the publications of national statistical agencies in countries that host most of the world’s refugee and IDP populations have been essentially silent on these populations. However, ongoing work at the United Nations has focused on facilitating the incorporation of refugee and IDP statistics into the core business of official statistics, which Silva characterized as “revolutionary in the world of official statistics.” International standards on refugee and IDP statistics provide principles and frameworks that give these agencies a clear mandate and role to play in compiling and producing official statistics. This in turn can advance public information and facilitate the correct interpretation of the data.

The fundamental principles of official statistics give wide range and flexibility to national statistical systems to use a varied array of different types of data, Silva said. They are not prescriptive in requiring particular instruments. Rather, they encourage and facilitate national statistical systems to draw on all types of data and then be explicit and transparent about the quality, timeliness, costs, and burden of data collection on the populations being studied.

Silva identified four major challenges in strengthening international statistics on forcibly displaced people: (1) historically weak collaborations between national statistics offices, migration authorities, and international organizations around refugee and IDP statistics; (2) a lack of consistent terminology, inadequate data sources, and impediments to the comparability of international statistics on forcibly displaced people; (3) the diverse array of humanitarian organizations that are directly or indirectly involved

in collecting and disseminating data on refugees; and (4) the lack of international standards and recommendations that can guide national authorities, nongovernmental organizations, and international organizations in producing statistics on refugees and IDPs.

As an example of a challenge, Silva noted that few countries have census questions that can directly be used to identify refugees, and even fewer have published numbers of probable refugees. In the 2010 census round, only 66 percent of countries included questions on both country of birth and citizenship, which limits the possibilities of identification for studies of integration and discrimination (Juran and Snow, 2017). Similarly, only 50 percent of countries asked the year of arrival as a question in the 2010 census round, which again limits opportunities.

The International Recommendations on Refugee Statistics, released in 2018 by the Expert Group on Refugee and Internally Displaced Persons Statistics, reaffirmed that asylum seekers and refugees should be counted as part of the “usually resident population” in a population and housing census. The recommendations also encouraged all future censuses to include all three core migration topics: country of birth, country of citizenship, and year or period of arrival. They strongly recommended the inclusion of “reason for migration” as an additional core topic in order to identify probable refugees. They also recommended inclusion of people living in refugee camps, reception centers, temporary structures, and collective accommodation in all census enumerations. Finally, they provided guidance on dissemination of detailed geo-referenced data, while protecting the security and confidentiality of respondents, to ensure maximum use of available census data.

Silva provided a snapshot of different census questions/topics and response categories for seven African countries (see Table 4-1), emphasizing the trade-off between harmonization/international comparability of data and respecting the contexts of situations being studied.

Turning to civil registration data, Silva described civil registration as “the continuous, permanent, compulsory and universal recording of the occurrence and characteristics of vital events . . . in accordance with the legal requirements of a country” (United Nations, 2014). He noted that civil registration is foundational for individuals in proving their legal identity and is the preferred source of vital statistics. However, in situations of conflict and displacement, vital event registration is particularly challenging. As an example, he noted that approximately 43 percent of the almost 750,000 Syrian refugee children under age 4 living in neighboring countries were born in exile, yet over one-half of married Syrian couples do not have a marriage certificate, and 70 percent of them do not have national identity documentation.

TABLE 4-1 Census Questions and Response Categories Related to Refugees and IDPs in Seven African Countries

SOURCE: Expert Group on Refugee and Internally Displaced Persons Statistics (2018).

Civil registration systems, unlike population or housing censuses, are passive systems, he noted. The responsibility is on the individual to register a birth, marriage, or death as opposed to a traditional census, where an enumerator comes to the individual’s household. For Syrian refugees in Jordan, for example, registering a marriage and receiving a marriage certificate from the Jordanian sharia courts requires five or six different documents, including proof of identity for the bride and groom, proof of identity for the bride’s guardian and two witnesses, a health certificate from the ministry of health verifying that the bride and groom are not carriers of certain diseases, a petition from the courts, and an approval letter from the ministry of interior (Clutterbuck et al., 2018).

The inability to meet such demands results in substantial and systematic under-registration of vital events, which increases the risks to refugees and IDPs, according to Silva. For example, an inability to register a marriage can make it impossible to register the birth of a child. It also places women at particular risk since they do not have legal proof of being in a marriage, which undermines their ability to prove relationships to authorities and has both medium- and long-term implications for such issues as property rights and inheritance rights. If vital registration and identity documents are not up to date, they may not be consistent with property records when a refugee

returns home, which can threaten economic livelihoods and community consensus and harmony.

International recommendations on refugee and IDP statistics reaffirm the need for the state to register all vital events of all people resident within national borders and territories. For example, the Expert Group on Refugee and Internally Displaced Persons Statistics (2018) recognized that refugees must have the opportunity to register births in the host country as legal recognition of a child’s existence in the host country as well as in the country of origin or a third country in case of repatriation or resettlement. This also highlights the importance of institutional coordination among civil registration, migration authorities, and national statistics offices.

As a final example, Silva described the situation in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Approximately 53 percent of the population of the ECOWAS region—about 196 million people—lack birth registration and do not have proof of identification. The movement of people within ECOWAS is seven times that of any other subregion in sub-Saharan Africa, and 70 percent of all ECOWAS migration is within the region. Across ECOWAS, particularly for refugees and IDPs, access to services is greatly hindered by inadequate national identification systems.

In response, ECOWAS member states have been developing national data protection legislation; establishing central, independent data protection agencies; and revising national identification legislation. For example, national identity systems underpinned by biometric authentication are being advanced in a number of low- and middle-income countries, some of which are host to many refugees and IDPs. Such actions have stimulated a number of difficult questions around national data protection legislation, the establishment of centralized and independent data protection agencies, and the robustness of the legal framework, Silva noted, which have yet to be vigorously discussed and debated.

Silva offered three broad conclusions from his presentation:

1. The use of multiple data sources and multiple measurement methods is absolutely critical to improving statistics on IDPs and refugees.
2. To date, there has been a heavy reliance on UNHCR registration data and ad hoc humanitarian surveys to inform what is known about the demography of forced migration.
3. It is important to link a systems or statistical systems approach with well-defined standards and clear technical guidance.

During the general discussion, Silva noted that, due to poor availability of data and limitations in estimation methods, population researchers do not know much about the basic demographic characteristics of refugee

populations or IDPs, such as fertility, mortality, or nuptiality trends, particularly during protracted periods of displacement. Without civil registration and vital statistics and more inclusive population censuses, he continued, researchers can say little about, for example, whether migrant and refugee populations come to look more like the host population over time. Though European Union countries may be able to do more sophisticated research, such as constructing synthetic cohorts and studying refugee populations over time, most of the world is several steps away from being able to accurately and comprehensively represent the sociodemographic situation of refugees and IDPs in their official statistics.

CIVIL REGISTRATION AND VITAL STATISTICS IN THE SERVICE OF REFUGEES

Marwan Khawaja (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia [ESCWA]) focused on civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems as they relate to Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan.¹ The World Health Organization and the United Nations Population Fund have a regional strategy to improve CRVS systems in the ESCWA region. Key priorities have been to develop analytical capacity to critically appraise vital statistics quality in all countries of the region and to increase and sustain investments and resource allocation to improve institutional and human capacity.

The ESCWA member states have a large number of refugees and IDPs—about 8 million IDPs and 6 to 7 million refugees scattered across the member countries. In particular, the war in Syria that began in 2011 resulted in the displacement of an estimated 5.3 million refugees while internally displacing 6.3 million people within Syria. More than 1.4 million Syrians are living in Lebanon, with about 1 million registered with UNHCR. Syrian refugees in Lebanon do not live in camps, Khawaja said. They are scattered across the country, though some live in camp-like situations. In May 2015, the Lebanese government asked UNHCR to stop registration of Syrian refugees. He noted the last census in Lebanon was in 1932, so there are not any alternative sources of data.

In Jordan, which has about the same number of Syrian refugees as Lebanon, the situation is different. The 2015 census included specific questions on refugees, including questions on nationality. According to that census, Jordan had about 1.3 million Syrian refugees, though only about 630,000 were registered with UNHCR. About 30 percent lived in camps and approximately 70 percent lived in cities and towns.

The war in Syria and resulting displacement have obstructed the complete and accurate registration of vital events for a growing number of

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¹ The views expressed in Khawaja’s presentation are his own and do not necessarily represent those of the United Nations.

Syrians. Among the challenges identified by the Norwegian Refugee Council (2013, 2015) are that refugees lack understanding of the importance of civil registration and of how to access and navigate civil registration processes; some refugees are unable to provide the supporting documents required to register vital events; and large numbers of refugees can overwhelm public authorities and the functioning of their administrative system.

In Lebanon, according to household surveys, 90 percent of parents with children born in Syria reported that they had registered the birth of their son or daughter. However, only 17 percent of parents with children born in Lebanon reached at least one level of registration because of how complicated birth registration is in Lebanon. In Jordan, the 2015 census added questions about asylum status of all household members and whether they were registered with UNHCR. According to data from this census, the vast majority of Syrians in Jordan, about 97 percent, said they were registered with UNHCR.

An analysis of census data and registration data revealed large differences in the completeness of death registration between Jordanians and non-Jordanians, said Khawaja. About 57 to 58 percent of deaths were registered for Jordanian males, with much fewer for Jordanian females, but for non-Jordanians only 16 to 20 percent for males and 17 to 24 percent for females were registered. Khawaja indicated it is not known why these numbers are so low.

Another part of the analysis entails using focus groups to learn about barriers to registration and about linkages between the census data and the civil registration data to estimate completeness. These approaches reflect the recommendation to use multiple data sources to arrive at conclusions, Khawaja said.

A second initiative Khawaja described involves the use of data from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) on births to Palestinians in Lebanon. The UNRWA Lebanon Field Office registered a total of 108,793 births between 2000 and 2015, including 13,441 (12.3%) births from families residing outside Lebanon. Of the 95,382 registered births from families in Lebanon, the numbers are gradually declining, which is to be expected given falling fertility rates. The sex ratio is within the expected range and is consistent over time, the births do not cluster at certain times of the year, and the data are consistent with surveys. Overall, said Khawaja, the UNRWA birth registration data seem to be of good quality. Next steps include calculating age-specific and total fertility rates using UNRWA registration data for women ages 15 to 49 to verify consistency with estimates from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey of Palestine refugees in Lebanon. Another step is to compare the numbers and characteristics of births in UNRWA registration data with births recorded in the census of Palestine refugees in Lebanon and conduct a record linkage study if feasible.

Registration of the deaths of children under age 5 is more problematic. The UNRWA Lebanon Field Office registered 115 deaths of children under 5 years between 2005 and 2015, including 1 (0.9%) death that occurred outside Lebanon—a very small number that suggests a problem with death registration, he said.

Next steps for this initiative include identifying reasons for low death registration coverage and examining other potential sources of mortality data, such as the UNRWA health information system. Another step is to compare the number and characteristics of deaths in UNRWA registration data with deaths recorded in the census of Palestine refugees in Lebanon and conduct a record linkage study if feasible. In both Jordan and Lebanon, valuable opportunities exist for record linkage studies to assess the completeness of birth and death registration.

During the general discussion, Christina Clark-Kazak noted that birth registration has implications for research in countries that contain migrants from regions where no systematic birth registration exists. In that case, UNHCR assigns migrants what has been called a “bureaucratic birthdate,” in which an estimate of age is made and a birthdate of January 1 or July 1 is designated. That has real consequences for access to services once they arrive in the country of resettlement, she noted—for example, people of refugee origin trying to access state pensions may be considerably older than their assigned age. Khawaja acknowledged the existence of such practices and noted that many birthdays are the 15th of the month for UNRWA birth registration data.

Problems exist in other areas as well, Khawaja observed. For example, the Syrian government made it difficult for low-income refugees to register while living in other countries because the costs of registration are higher outside of Syria. For example, the cost to get a passport from abroad is five times the cost of getting a passport in Syria. As a result, people living abroad tend not to register.

Silva pointed out that the ECOWAS initiative in West Africa is focused on trying to facilitate the interoperability of national civil registration systems and legal identity systems of neighboring countries, thereby preemptively resolving the problem that Syrian refugees are facing in Jordan. He noted that many refugee movements are fairly regional and localized rather than massive movements from one region to another. In his view, addressing these types of situations through subregional groupings of countries is a good way forward.

In addition, he said, improving the completeness and quality of CRVS systems would recognize that vulnerable and hard-to-reach populations may need more flexible arrangements in terms of accessing and providing supporting documentation. The issuing of a birth certificate does not guarantee citizenship. But the ongoing shift toward universal civil registration,

which has been taking place in the past 10 to 15 years, helps to recognize the personhood of each individual and would help solve many problems that exist today, he said.

Holly E. Reed asked about demographic surveillance sites and how they might provide guidance on better registration over time. Though they are currently localized and specialized, she said, they could be scaled up for national civil registration. Silva agreed that good examples exist of health and demographic surveillance sites. However, they have no legal gravity, in that they cannot register a birth or death. Nevertheless, these sites have been cooperating with local civil registration authorities in some countries. For example, an effort in Senegal uses facial recognition technology and data to estimate the age of people who lack birth certificates. This poses challenging questions in terms of the vulnerabilities of these populations, Silva added, particularly given that biometric identification is a multibillion-dollar business; shoring up the legal framework and data protection standards in low- and middle-income countries is a challenge.

Brad Blitz (British Academy) followed up on an ethical issue, noting only 10 percent of births were registered in Bangladesh a decade ago, whereas the figure is now approximately 90 percent. The push for birth registration, which has been encouraged by UNICEF and other multilateral agencies, has led to petty corruption, he said. Similarly, UNHCR has been pressing states to accede to the refugee conventions, and in so doing they have encouraged the reconfiguration of certain categories, such as stateless persons. The result, Blitz said, is data that “don’t stand to reason.” For example, Brazil, which is a country of more than 200 million people, has just a handful of stateless people according to its official data.

Silva acknowledged that the focus on birth registration has been “a bit singular,” although the campaigns have led to important progress and changed social norms in many parts of the world so that parents recognize the importance of registering their children’s births. Nevertheless, Silva recognized the need for a life-course approach to civil registration, from birth to death and everything in between. For example, the ability to register the birth of a child is greatly dependent on the ability to provide evidence of a marriage in the form of a marriage certificate; likewise, the ability to claim property or inheritance rights requires having a death certificate for the spouse. He added that UN agencies have recognized the need to focus not only on a single area, such as birth or death registration, but also on registration across the life course.

He also cautioned about the use of some birth registration statistics, because many come from surveys based on self-reported information from women of reproductive age. Some studies have revealed confusion between, for example, a birth notification, a birth registration, and a birth certification. In some places, confusion exists between things such as vaccination cards and birth certificates.

In answer to a question about the ethics of biometrics and the use of social media data, Silva noted that extraordinary and innovative work is being done with mobile phone carriers and with social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Social scientists are also showing the potential to re-identify individuals by joining that kind of data with administrative data, particularly in clustered populations such as IDP and refugee camps. Silva pointed to attention, particularly in professional academic demography, on the innovative use of social media data, but said there has not been complementary discussion and research about the ethical principles and guidelines needed to navigate this new terrain.