(Newsletter: CRVS Insight November 2020)

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set an ambitious agenda to produce relevant, reliable and timely data. The quantity and breadth of data required to monitor and evaluate the SDGs presents a considerable challenge to national statistical systems. Therefore, National Statistical Offices (NSOs) have a major role in making the best use of existing data sources.

Population and housing censuses (PHC) have a vital role in producing official statistics and providing fundamental information for measuring SDG indicators. CRVS systems can also generate reliable and accurate statistics for small areas. Registering all vital events (live births, deaths, foetal deaths, marriages, divorces) in a universal manner and reporting it to the statistical system, enables the continuous production of regular, reliable, accurate small area vital statistics – a critical component for monitoring the implementation of policies relevant for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

To strengthen national capacities for producing SDG indicators, a draft technical report on measuring SDG indicators through PHC and CRVS was produced by the United Nations. And two rounds of online workshops have been organized by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) over the last few weeks. More than 70 participants from 33 countries participated in the training. For more information, the materials and presentations from the workshops are available online here.