Objectives

  1. The Conference shall provide for a midterm evaluation, since the Millennium Declaration, of the status of the countries with respect to the MDG goals and targets. Such evaluation will be useful in the identification and implementation of relevant strategies and approaches to ensure availability of data that will be needed by local/national leaders and policy makers, international community and other stakeholders for measuring the MDGs by 2015.

  2. The Conference will take off from the recommendations and provide a follow-up to the discussion in the Workshop on Statistics for Monitoring the Achievement of the MDGs in Asia and the Pacific that was organized by the UNESCAP and ADB in Bangkok in July-August 2006, which discussed a host of MDG data-related issues faced by national statistical systems and international organizations. As such, the Conference is envisioned to serve as a forum for sharing good practices and methodologies adopted at the national and international levels in:

    a. Data generation and compilation;
    b. Addressing data gaps;
    c. Data utilization and analysis;
    d. Strengthening statistical capacity to improve MDG data availability;
    e. Dissemination of MDG indicators

  3. The Conference will provide venue for discussing organizational issues between the countries and international organizations in the provision of MDG indicators, including topics on:

    a. Country- and regional-level coordination,
    b. Regional and international technical cooperation
    c. Challenges and opportunities

  4. The Conference could serve as initial take-off point for the periodic conduct of future MDG data fora, thus providing for a common reference for discussion, and monitoring and evaluation of developments.