How can the EU support SDG monitoring efforts in developing countries?

Today, one year into the 15 years that the world leaders last year set aside for achieving the global goals for sustainable development - the SDGs - the framework for following up and reviewing whether we are on track is taking shape. On October 10, 2016, the European Parliament's Committee on Development will discuss how the EU can contribute to support the capacity and the ability of the developing countries and beyond for tracking progress.

To prepare for the discussion, DIIS was asked to (i) take stock of the lessons learned from monitoring MDG progress and the opportunities - and challenges - which exist with respect to monitoring progress according to the SDGs, particularly with a view to the so-called data revolution, and (ii) provide recommendations for how the EU could contribute to the efforts of developing countries to monitor SDG progress.

Among the recommendations are that the EU contributes to enable the disaggregation of data such that intra-country comparisons of SDG progress can be made for according to age, sex, geography, ethnicity, etc.; that efforts are made to increasingly rely on administrative data as opposed to census data for SDG monitoring; and that priority is given to strengthen SDG monitoring on the aspects and indicators where (global) capacity is weakest.

The full set of recommendations - and the full report - can be downloaded from the EU parliament's web-page.