UN's dying places classification: 11.5% of deaths in 35 countries had no clear place

The United Nations Statistical Commission has endorsed the International Classification of Dying Places, the first international standard for recording where people die and where they receive care in their final period of life. It was developed at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, which announced it on November 5, 2026.

The gap it targets is large. In a report prepared for the Commission, the Coimbra team says that among 107 million people who died in 35 countries between 2012 and 2021, 11.5% died at an ill-defined place, recorded as unknown or undefined. That is roughly one in ten deaths with no usable location.

Seven chapters, from home to a moving vehicle

The classification, known as the ICP, sorts dying places into seven chapters labeled A to G: dwelling or domicile, health or care facility, other facility, vehicle, outdoor, elsewhere, and unknown. Each chapter splits into categories and subcategories, so an ambulance gets its own code within the vehicle chapter and a public road falls under outdoor.

It also covers places that national systems often fold into "other", such as shelters and prisons, which the ICP treats as collective dwellings. According to the Coimbra report, filling in the form takes from a few seconds to a few minutes, a short length chosen to make doctors more likely to use it.

Recording what people wanted, not only where they died

The less obvious feature is that the same codes can describe different points on a person's path: where they received care, where they preferred to receive it, where they preferred to die and where death happened. When preferences are recorded, countries could compare the place someone wanted with the place they ended up.

"We have international systems that allow countries to compare what people die from, but until now we have not had an international classification specifically dedicated to describing where people are cared for and where they die," said Barbara Gomes, who conceived the ICP and leads the EOLinPLACE project.

How it was built and what happens next

The classification grew out of EOLinPLACE, a project funded by the European Research Council, with research in Portugal, the Netherlands, Uganda and the United States. More than 200 people contributed, and the team says it discussed the classification with people from 61 countries. In those consultations, 91% said it was acceptable to them, according to the report.

The Commission's endorsement came at its 57th session, held March 3 to 6, 2026, and the ICP now sits in the UN's family of international statistical classifications with Coimbra as its custodian. The main intended use is on death certificates and electronic death registration systems. How quickly national statistics offices adopt it has not been announced.