Achieving SDG 5 and other gender-related SDG targets will require robust data systems that can only be established through smarter and sustainable investments in data collection, analysis, and use. This necessitates renewed commitments by philanthropic and bilateral donors, governments, and international institutions to mobilize and track the flow of resources directed at strengthening country data systems.
In recent years and in multiple fora, governments around the world have recognized that all countries need to have accessible, timely, and reliable disaggregated data to measure progress and ensure no one is left behind in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The UN’s High-level Group for Partnership, Coordination and Capacity-Building for Statistics for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development met to review implementation of the Cape Town Global Action Plan for sustainable development data. A new framework for the Global Action Plan will be reviewed during the 54th session of the UN Statistical Commission in March 2022. The HLG also discussed the Bern Data Compact for the Decade of Action on the SDGs.
Statistics are at the core of modern decision-making. They tell policymakers how many people are in the hospital, how the economy is doing, and by how much CO2 emissions are ascending. In the past year, their importance rose as official.
The third UN World Data Forum, held from 3-6 October in Bern, Switzerland, resulted in the Bern Data Compact for the Decade of Action on the SDGs. The Bern Compact calls for commitments in five areas: develop data capacity, establish data partnerships, produce data to leave no one behind, understand the world with data, and build trust in data. In the Compact, participants recognize the need for “fit-for-purpose” data to achieve the 2030 Agenda, with each data ecosystem stakeholder playing their part to achieve the common goal of “a world with data we trust .