Challenges

To achieve and measure progress towards SDG and its Targets, high quality and reliable statistics are indispensable. Policy makers need them to make informed decisions and society and media need such information to hold them accountable. SDG 17.18 and 17.19 reflect this directly, but actually, no SDG can be achieved without sufficient statistics. Unfortunately, for many Targets, good statistics are lacking or insufficient to measure progress.

In the 17 programme countries in the UNECE region (Western Balkan/Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia) a lot of expertise is present, but it has not sufficiently been shared. Sub-regional specificities for example of countries of the former Soviet Union or former Yugoslavia, or specific to the Caucasus or Central Asia exist needing experts from these regions to share their solutions and best practices.

Toward a Solution

The UNECE Statistical Division is bringing together experts from across and beyond the region to jointly face these challenges by sharing best practices and expertise. These workshops and expert meetings are driven by the countries, and the focus is always on innovation and sharing best practices and on identifying future work that is needed (and on the basis of which task teams and expert groups are set up). Equally important are sessions on concrete products, practices and services that can be shared with other countries. They cover statistical indicators of nearly all SDGs but also the efficiency of producing statistics and are therefore an effective way to improve the availability of statistics to measure progress to SDGs. UNECE has been making specific efforts to increase the active participation of experts from the 17 programme countries in these meetings and workshops. By making experts from programme countries aware of their strengths and expertise and by building confidence to share this to the benefit of other countries facing similar issues, not only south-south (or east-east) but also real triangular or south-north/east-west cooperation is strengthened. Additionally, to address specific issues for the programme countries, sub-regional workshops or sessions are regularly organized for countries with similar historical backgrounds and between experts that understand better their specific challenges. This includes high-level ministerial meetings for the EECCA region (Western Balkan/Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia) to identify strategic issues faced by national statistical offices in that region. As these events have group work and other activities to stimulate collaboration and building rapport between experts, the impact continues after the workshops have ended. In many cases they have led to further south-south collaboration and study tours.

In 2024, UNECE organized and enriched over 25 workshops/expert meetings by facilitating the participation of experts from the program countries from the EECCA region (triangular). For example, the Expert Meeting on Statistics for Sustainable Development Goals & 2024 Workshop on Statistics for SDGs in Albania where ten programme countries were funded to share and learn from colleagues and the SEEA Seminar as well as the Expert Forum for Producers and Users of Climate Change-related Statistics, in Geneva where experts from Georgia, Kazakhstan and Moldova participated and contributed as resource persons.

Additionally, five workshops were organized to exchange within these countries (south-south/east-east). For example, the 2024 High-Level Seminar ‘Statistical leadership in the new data ecosystem: building up and managing relations with data holders, other producers of official statistics, and users’ in Serbia where 18 Chief Statisticians and heads of international relations from Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia had strategic discussions on priorities. The 2024 Workshop on Modernizing Statistical Legislation in Albania, where experts from the 26 experts from 12 programme countries and 25 other experts exchanged their best practices and experiences and came with recommendations for improving statistical legislation.

Another important part of the UNECE strategy is to organize sector reviews in EECCA countries where experts assess national statistics systems in specific areas, for example in Environment and Climate Change statistics. By making sure that the expert assessment teams include experts from the EECCA region, not only can the country being assessed built on experience and knowledge from the region, but also the reverse, thus leading to effective south-south and triangular cooperation.

These reviews result in reports with concrete recommendations and are important tools for drafting national statistical development plans and thus used by all major funding agencies (including bilateral) to steer funding to where they are most important and/or have the biggest impact. They are thus leading to sustainable improvements and also to continued collaboration between the experts from different countries.

For example, in 2024, two sector reviews in Environment and Climate Change statistics were organized in Georgia and Kazakhstan with experts from Armenia, Belarus, Georgia and Kazakhstan have participated as experts and thus mutually benefited from this and strengthened collaboration between the agencies. The evaluation report and its recommendations led to several follow-up activities to improve the quality and availability of Environmental statistics, including for several SDGs.

UNECE has done efforts to get the funding to support the participation of experts from the EECCA region in the activities described above, but also actively looked for collaboration with other regional organisations such as ESCAP, CIS-Stat, EFTA and Eurostat.

The overall impact was/is a significant increase in the active participation of experts from the EECCA region and thus more south-south and triangular transfer of knowledge and expertise. As well as increased and long-lasting collaboration and cooperation beyond these workshops, meetings and reviews/assessments. This again improved and keeps improving not only the progress towards SDG targets 17.18 and 17.19, but also the increasing the availability of statistics to monitor most of the other SDGs.