To inform the discussions at the 57th session of the UN Statistical Commission (UNSC), the UN Secretariat issued a report describing the work by the Statistics Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), in cooperation with other entities of the UN system, in support of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The report (E/CN.3/2026/13) updates on the 2025 reports and publications reviewing progress towards the SDGs, including the annual report of the UN Secretary-General on progress towards the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals Report 2025, and the Gender Snapshot 2025, among others.

In addition, the report outlines efforts to update the Global SDG Indicators Database and work on data and metadata exchange. It notes that as of 20 October 2025, the Database included data for 232 of the 234 unique indicators and 3.3 million data records, compared to data for 200 of the 231 unique indicators and approximately 1.4 million data records in 2020.

The report also contains updates on:

  • the Data for Now initiative;
  • the monitoring and evaluation framework for the Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for Small Island Developing States: A Renewed Declaration for Resilient Prosperity;
  • the collaborative on the use of administrative data for statistical purposes;
  • the Global Network of Institutions for Statistical Training;
  • the Global Network of Data Officers and Statisticians;
  • the work of the Intersecretariat Working Group on Household Surveys; and
  • the work on citizen data.

The UNSC assists the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in:

  • promoting the development of national statistics and the improvement of their comparability;
  • the coordination of the statistical work of specialized agencies;
  • the development of the central statistical services of the Secretariat;
  • advising the organs of the UN on general questions relating to the collection, analysis, and dissemination of statistical information; and
  • promoting the improvement of statistics and statistical methods generally.

The UNSC’s 57th session will convene in New York, US, from 3-6 March 2026 under the theme, ‘Better Data, Better Lives.’ The Commission’s 2026 membership consists of 34 countries, elected by the ECOSOC on the basis of an equitable geographical distribution for a term of four years. [Publication: Work for the review of progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals: Report of the Secretary-General]