This Handbook provides guidance to countries for the improvement of their civil registration and vital statistics systems and background and specifications for developing and establishing civil registration and vital statistics systems in countries that do not yet have such systems in place. The Handbook deals with essential components of structure, management, operation and maintenance functions to handle the entire range of vital events-live births, deaths, foetal deaths, marriages and dissolutions of marriage- from the civil registration and the vital statistics perspectives. It also covers forms, data collection, record processing, storing and editing of information, issues of security, certificate issuing of vital records, the functional relations between the civil registration system and the vital statistics system, the legal and administrative requirements and the daily operational and maintenance activities to ensure completeness, timeliness and accuracy. The Handbook is one of a series of five prepared by the United Nations Statistics Division as part of the International Programme for Accelerating the Improvement of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Systems launched in 1991.