Attachments
This Toolkit was jointly developed by the Regional Support Office of the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime (RSO) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific. It serves as an updated version of the Bali Process Civil Registration Assessment Toolkit that was initially published in 2018 in consultation with a Technical Advisory Group of national experts on civil registration from Bangladesh, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand.
Background
Across the Bali Process region, displaced and vulnerable populations continue to rise as a result of natural and humanitarian disasters, armed conflict, and economic hardships—pushing people to seek a better life through unsafe land and maritime movements. In recent weeks, some 1,100 Rohingya have made the dangerous crossing from refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar in Southeastern Bangladesh to Aceh in Northern Indonesia. Some 374,000 Afghans living in Pakistan have so far returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan, following a change in policy announced in October 2023 around undocumented foreigners.
Inclusive civil registration is fundamental to providing identity and basic protection for individuals, while it provides governments with robust and accurate data on the populations under their care. Providing a legal identity to hard-to-reach and marginalised groups contributes to equitable access to basic resources and supports and improves stability for these communities.
Without legal identity documents, a person cannot travel using regular channels or generally, access basic protection and services. Greater security and legal identity help to mitigate against irregular migration and deter against the exploitation of migrants. The Bali Process Toolkit for Inclusive Civil Registration provides a resource that can be used by governments to assess national civil registration systems to understand the inclusivity of hard-to-reach and marginalised populations—including people living in rural, remote, isolated or border areas; minorities; indigenous people; migrants; non-citizens; asylum seekers; refugees; stateless people; and people without documentation.