5 October 2018: The Statistical Conference of the Americas (SCA) has published a report on efforts to establish a priority set of SDG indicators in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Titled ‘Report on the Prioritization of Indicators for Regional Statistical Follow-Up to the SDGs in LAC,’ the report was presented during the SCA Executive Committee’s 17th meeting, which reviewed efforts to monitor the SDGs.

During the meeting convening from 3-4 October 2018, in Santiago, Chile, representatives from national statistical offices (NSOs) in LAC examined the 154 indicators prioritized for regional statistical follow-up to the SDGs. The indicators cover all 17 SDGs, and 94 of their 169 targets.

The indicators were selected based on: regional relevance; inclusion in other monitoring frameworks; and feasibility of the indicator’s production by countries. The set includes 120 indicators from the global SDG indicator framework, 30 complementary indicators and four proxy indicators. The proxy indicators are:

• Proportion of population living below the regional extreme poverty line, by sex, age, employment status, geographical location and ethnicity;
• Unmet demand for family planning;
• Urban workers in low-productivity sectors of the labor market, by sex, age, income quintile and ethnicity; and
• Proportion of recycled waste in relation to total collected waste.

Also during the meeting, Alicia Bárcena, Executive Secretary, UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), noted the need for: more and better statistics; greater levels of disaggregation, especially regarding gender; and linking official statistics and big data. Pascual Gerstenfeld, ECLAC’s Statistics Division, noted a shift from producing indicators for the purposes of accountability, to producing them in order to design better evidence-based public policies.

Prior to the SCA meeting, ECLAC and the European Commission’s EUROSTAT held a high-level seminar on integrating non-traditional data sources into national statistical systems.

The SCA is a subsidiary body of ECLAC and the main forum for discussing the development of statistics in the region. [ECLAC press release] [Report on the Prioritization of Indicators for Regional Statistical Follow-up to the Sustainable Development Goals in Latin America and the Caribbean] [Website of 17th meeting] [High-level seminar webpage]