Annex IV List of minimum requirements for a civil registration and vital statistics legal framework The Africa Programme secretariat developed the list of minimum requirements as a component of the monitoring and evaluation legal framework. The term “law” refers to any legal instrument that governs the registration of vital events in the country or the production of civil registration-based vital statistics. This could be in the form of acts, laws, rules, regulations, directives, orders, notifications and other associated documents. The minimum requirements for a civil registration and vital statistics legal framework are the following: For birth and death (a) The law assigns the functions of establishing, operating and maintaining a national civil registration and vital statistics system to a governmental agency or agencies and appoints a Registrar General; (b) The law provides the clear designation of duties and responsibilities with respect to the registration, recording, reporting, collection, compilation, analysis, evaluation, presentation and dissemination of data; (c) The law establishes an appropriate organizational structure or structures for the efficient management, operation and maintenance of the system; (d) The law has provisions on the registration of birth, death and cause of death; (e) The law covers all members of the population in the country and all geographic (f) The law states that the registration of all vital events is compulsory; (g) The law distinguishes between late and delayed registration; a (h) The law ensures the confidentiality of individual registration records. areas; For marriage and divorce: (a) The law assigns the functions of establishing, operating and maintaining a national civil registration and vital statistics system to a governmental agency or agencies and appoints a Registrar General; a Civil registration law should prescribe the time period in which vital events should be registered after occurrence. The registration of an event during this period is called current registration. If the registration occurs after the legally specified time period but within one year after occurrence, it is called late registration. Delayed registration is the registration of a vital event later than one year after the occurrence of the event. It is important to differentiate between late and delayed registration, because data from late registration can still be used for producing vital statistics, whereas delayed registration should be excluded, given that they do not provide information on vital events occurred during the reference period. 51