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CARIBBEAN: Online regional training workshop on measuring indicators of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development through the use and processing of census data with REDATAM

Population and development
5 October 2020|Briefing note

During the week of August 22nd, and for seven days, an online Redatam workshop was held for the Caribbean countries. This was organized jointly by CELADE-Population Division of UN ECLAC and the Regional Office of UN ECLAC for the Caribbean. There were 26 participants (15 women and 11 men) from the National Statistical Offices of 12 Caribbean countries: Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Cayman Islands, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent & the Grenadines, and Suriname.

CELADE, the Population Division of ECLAC, conducted a process of review and analysis on the indicators of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development, which constitutes the roadmap for population and development in Latin America and the Caribbean for the coming years. Together with the countries of the region, an assessment was carried out of the potential of the censuses to measure these indicators in the 2020 census round.

Censuses may allow direct or complementary indicators to be computed from the list defined for the 2030 Agenda. Due to regional heterogeneity, in some countries censuses will be the only available source while the survey systems and especially continuous administrative records are strengthened. Also, censuses may allow for the disaggregation of the indicators, as defined in SDG 17.18, particularly migratory status, indigenous peoples, afro-descendant populations and people with disabilities, with the additional advantage of having this information at smaller territorial scales. Even though surveys offer in depth information for specific groups, the breakdown from an intersectional perspective (for example, to visualize gender, ethnic, generational and territorial inequalities simultaneously) is usually only feasible with censuses, due to their universal character.

In addition, censuses are used to establish baselines and update sampling frames for household surveys. Finally, census information is used as base for preparing population estimates and projections, making it possible to obtain the denominators for many of the SGD indicators. This will be the case, for example, for some indicators of mortality and fertility.

This workshop objectives were:

  1. Strengthening of technical capacity for the processing and mapping of disaggregated SDG indicators based on censuses, through the use of REDATAM;
  2. Processing of selected indicators for monitoring the SDG goals, including their disaggregation (such as urban and rural areas, age groups, sex, disability, indigenous peoples, among others); and
  3. Disaggregation of indicators by vulnerable groups, since the 2030 Agenda is emphatic in its premise of “leaving no one behind” and, also, because in the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the identification and characterization of these specific groups become urgent.

This activity was part of the “UNDA10 Program on Statistics and Data” project carried out in conjunction with the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD). Related to this project, the draft report “Measuring SDG Indicators through Population and Housing Census and Civil Registration Data” was presented during the workshop.

Draft report available at  https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic-social/census/documents/tr_on_sdg_in_phc_crvs.pdf

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