Statistics Organizations from the Region Advance on Preparations for the New Development Agenda

Representatives of statistics organizations held a meeting on May 26-28 at the headquarters of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), where they made progress on preparations to implement and monitor the new post-2015 development agenda (expected to be approved in September) as well as on the strategic working plan they will carry out in the region over the next decade.

Delegates from 19 Latin American and Caribbean countries, as well as from Canada and Spain, attended the Fourteenth Meeting of the Executive Committee of the Statistical Conference of the Americas (SCA), a subsidiary body of ECLAC. The participants agreed to hold the Eighth Meeting of this Conference, which is convened regularly every two years, in Quito on November 17-19 of this year.

During the meeting that took place this week, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Jamaica and Mexico were elected to represent Latin America and the Caribbean at the Inter-Agency Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goals indicators, while Argentina, the Bahamas, Ecuador, El Salvador and Saint Lucia will serve in the same capacity in the High-level Group for Partnership, Coordination and Capacity-Building for post-2015 monitoring.

The creation of these two groups, which will design and monitor the goals and indicators of the post-2015 agenda—which will come into effect once the deadline for compliance with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has passed—was agreed upon last March during the 46th session of the United Nations Statistical Commission, the highest decision-making body for global statistical activities, which groups statistics directors from Member States.

At the meeting held in Santiago, Chile, a proposed Strategic Plan, 2015-2025, of the Statistical Conference of the Americas was presented, along with the progress made by working groups and task forces as part of the program on regional and international cooperation activities for 2014 and 2015.

The various working groups are focused on censuses, the harmonization of statistics on poverty, national accounts, information and communications technologies, labor market indicators, institution-building, environmental statistics, international classifications, household surveys and statistics on gender, agriculture, childhood and adolescence, and public safety and justice.

There is also a working group on the monitoring of progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the post-2015 development agenda and SDGs, as well as two task forces on the quantification of South-South cooperation and disability statistics, respectively, and a Knowledge Transfer Network.

ECLAC’s Executive Committee of the SCA supports the Conference in the execution of its mandates and activities, which are oriented towards boosting progress on the region’s statistical policies and actions. During the period 2014-2015, SCA’s Executive Committee is presided by Ecuador and its members include Belize, Canada, Costa Rica, Cuba, Spain and Venezuela.

The Conference groups all of the countries in the Americas and also includes some States from outside the region.