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

4 January 2022|Briefing note

During the week of November 8th to 15th, for six days, a virtual 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 33 participants from the National Statistical Offices of Barbados, Belize, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Montserrat, Bahamas, Dominica, Suriname, Turks & Caicos, Grenada, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Saint Vincent & Grenadines and Montserrat.

Censuses offer a comparative advantage for obtaining disaggregated indicators for measuring the SDGs since, due to their universal nature, they allow the calculation of indicators disaggregated as established in SDG 17.18, such as migratory status, indigenous peoples, afro-descendant populations, and disabilities, with the advantage of having this information at smaller geographical scales. Furthermore, censuses make it possible to establish baselines for population estimates and projections, making it possible to obtain the denominators for many of the SDG indicators.

Furthermore, the display of statistics through maps and their various ways of representing their spatial distribution are an advantage for transmitting and making visible the social inequity that exists in the region at the national and sub-national level.

This workshop aimed to promote the use, analysis and dissemination of statistical information from population and housing censuses using the Redatam processing module and QGis mapping tool, and thus, to contribute to the task that NSOs have to calculate and process the indicators established to monitor the goals of the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda, including their breakdowns (such as urban and rural areas, age groups, sex, disability, belonging to indigenous peoples, among others.)

Additionally, to obtain information on vulnerable populations and their spatial distribution, since the 2030 Agenda is emphatic in its premise of "leaving no one behind" and, furthermore, because in the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the identification and characterization of these target groups becomes urgent. Transferring this information to density maps using QGis was very useful to determine where health policies should be focused to address the pandemic in those most critical areas.