The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015, as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. SDGs are composed of 17 global goals and 169 targets where each of these goals has a set indicator associated with it to help measure progress towards achieving the goal. The indicators are diverse, and cover a wide range of social, economic, and environmental factors. The notion of "Leaving No One Behind" is central to SDGs as it shows the commitment of the Agenda where every person should benefit from the realization of the SDGs. This further require indicators to be disaggregated across population sections.
Measuring the indicators and associated disaggregation poses a number of statistical challenges, including: Data availability where many countries suffer; data quality where the available data may not be reliable and accurate; data disaggregation that requires data to be disaggregated by various factors such as income, sex, age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability, and geographic location; Institutional challenges where it requires coordination across multiple government departments and agencies.
Despite efforts to mitigate these issues by enhancing statistical capabilities in various countries, introducing new methodologies, enhancing data quality, and advocating for improved data reporting, the task of accurately measuring progress towards the SDGs remains a significant hurdle.
This session aims to delve into the matters related to the SDGs framework and its measurement overall, understand the current state of data availability and existing gaps, explore how we are assessing progress in SDGs under the given conditions, and discuss the actions we need to take to address these prevalent measurement challenges.
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