Plan International, a key partner of UNHCR on birth registration, is a core group member of APAI-CRVS in Africa and, with UNHCR, also a member of the Regional CRVS Steering Group for Asia and the Pacific. Plan International’s Birth Registration Innovation Team initiated the development of a standards-based opensource CRVS software platform. The prototype version will be presented to States at the upcoming regional meetings in late 2017. Once finalized, OpenCRVS will offer developing countries that are digitalizing their CRVS systems free access to a software package that can be adapted to the country context, is compatible with other government systems (health information systems, population registers, etc.), will facilitate access to registration services for the hardest to reach and marginalised populations and is in line with international standards on data security and confidentiality.51 INITIATIVE: ‘GET EVERYONE IN THE PICTURE’ In 2012, UNHCR joined a partnership of UN agencies and other development organizations that work with governments to improve CRVS systems in Asia and the Pacific. Following a high-level meeting on Improvement of CRVS in Asia and the Pacific in 2012, UNHCR and its partners co-organized a Ministerial Conference on CRVS in Asia and the Pacific in 2014, at which participating States adopted the Ministerial Declaration ‘Get Everyone in the Picture’ and an accompanying Regional Action Framework that declared 2015-2024 to be the Asian-Pacific CRVS Decade.52 The Ministerial Declaration endorsed the goal of achieving universal and responsive CRVS systems by 2024 and recognized the role that responsive CRVS systems have in ‘[p]reventing and reducing the risk of statelessness’.53 It also recognized the need to address disparities in civil registration coverage among ‘hard-to-reach and marginalized populations’, including stateless persons, refugees and undocumented people.54 UNHCR is a member of the Regional Steering Group for CRVS in Asia and the Pacific that was established to assist States to implement the Declaration and Regional Action Framework. 37 States in the region have since submitted baseline reports to the Regional Steering Group, of which 17 aim to register more than 98 per cent of births by 2024.55 For example, Viet Nam’s report considered inequalities in access to birth and marriage registration of minorities in border areas. After official estimates in 2012 indicated that 10,000 persons of undetermined nationality were living in border areas, the Government adopted measures to resolve their nationality status and issue them with civil documentation. Its National Action Programme aims to increase registration to 98 per cent of rural births and 99 per cent of urban births by 2024. 51 For more information please contact: Edward Duffus, Head of Innovation at Plan International (edward.duffus@plan-international.org). 52 UNESCAP, Ministerial Conference on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics in Asia and the Pacific, 10 December 2014, E/ESCAP/MCCRVS/4, at: http://getinthepicture.org/sites/default/files/resources/Report%20of%20the%20conference.pdf. 53 Ibid, Ministerial Declaration, ‘Get Every One in the Picture’, para. 11(f). 54 Ibid, Ministerial Declaration, ‘Get Every One in the Picture’, para. 14. 55 http://goo.gl/uwM5QE. 13 CAMPAIGN TO END STATELESSNESS WITHIN 10 YE ARS