(16 February 2011) During a two days visit to Ecuador and Peru, which concluded yesterday night, the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, called on both South American countries to further strengthen their democratic institutions and extend the benefits of development to the most disadvantaged populations, including indigenous peoples.
Officials accompanying Ban Ki-moon included the Executive Secretary of ECLAC, Alicia Bárcena, and United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Oscar Fernández-Taranco, as well as other senior UN representatives.
In Quito, the UN Se…
The eight Millennium Development Goals - which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV and AIDS and providing universal primary education by 2015 - form a blueprint for tackling critical issues facing developing countries: poverty, hunger, inadequate education, gender inequality, child and maternal mortality, HIV/AIDS, and environmental degradation. The Caribbean Millennium Development Goals Report 2010 reviews progress in the Caribbean subregion towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals on the basis of the most recent data available from official coun…
Since the adoption of the Millennium Declaration, the international statistical community and the countries of the region have been working in improving monitoring and reporting of the MDGs indicators, reducing discrepancies among values of indicators published by countries and those reported by the international agencies, and dealing with data gaps especially in countries with low statistical capacities.
Although progress has been made, there is still a lot that needs to be done aiming at strengthening the statistical and institutional capacities of official statistical agencies and oth…