The Seventh Meeting of the Statistical Conference of the Americas (SCA), a subsidiary body of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), met from 5-7 November 2013, in Santiago, Chile.
Heads of national statistical institutes in Latin America and the Caribbean agreed to: strengthen the measurement of poverty, public security and justice, South-South cooperation and disability; and improve gender equality indicators.
7 November 2013: The Seventh Meeting of the Statistical Conference of the Americas (SCA), a subsidiary body of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), met from 5-7 November 2013, in Santiago, Chile. Heads of national statistical institutes in Latin America and the Caribbean agreed to: strengthen the measurement of poverty, public security and justice, South-South cooperation and disability; and improve gender equality indicators.
SCA-ECLAC approved the creation of a working group on statistics for public security and justice, which will consist of Mexico as coordinator, as well as Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and a specialized center of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The Conference also agreed to set up task forces to formulate and propose a methodological design and roadmap to measure South-South cooperation, and prepare a regional report on measuring disability. It also: reviewed activities proposed for 2014-2015 towards the standardization of measuring informal labor; addressed the development of basic economic statistics in the framework of the System of National Accounts (SNA 2008) in Latin America and the Caribbean; discussed progress and challenges regarding gender mainstreaming in producing statistics within national statistical systems; and called for collaborating on implementing the global strategy for improving agricultural and rural statistics in the region.
The Conference urged an increase in efforts to produce the necessary information to formulate indicators for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), with a view to accelerating their achievement by 2015, and to actively participate in the post-2015 development agenda process.
In addition, the seventh regional seminar on the MDGs, ‘The Post-2015 development agenda and challenges for national statistical systems in Latin America and the Caribbean,’ convened from 4-5 November, meeting with the SCA on 5 November. [ECLAC Press Release] [SCA Website] [Conference Website and Documents]