Consultative Meeting on Guidelines for Producing Statistics on Violence against Women will be held in Beirut, Lebanon from 8-10 November

DESA’s Statistics Division will conduct a Consultative Meeting to Review the Guidelines for Producing Statistics on Violence against Women. The draft guidelines provide comprehensive methodological guidance regarding the selection of core and additional topics, sources of data, relevant statistical classifications, outputs, wording of the questions and all other pertinent issues related to conducting statistical surveys to measure violence against women. The meeting will review the text in detail and, upon incorporation of all the inputs, the final version will be submitted to the United Nations Statistical Commission for approval.

For more information: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/default.htm

Expert Group Meeting on “Strategies for Attracting the best talent in the Public Service in Africa” to be held on 14-18 November in Lilongwe, Malawi

A workshop on Strengthening Public Administration and Leadership Capacities at Local Level for the Achievement of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will be held during the 33rd Annual Round-Table Conference of AAPAM. The workshop, a collaboration of DESA through the Division for Public Administration & Development Management (DPADM) and the African Association for Public Administration and management (AAPAM) aims to contribute to the strengthening of the capacity of public administration at local level for effective, efficient and equitable delivery of services through identifying strategies that strengthen local government capacities.

Local government officials will discuss challenges facing local level public administration and leadership within the context of achieving the MDGs under globalization and how such challenges can be overcome, to ensure developmental institutions at local level and achieve the intended results of decentralized governance.

Local governments are increasingly expected to be responsive to the needs and problems facing their communities and more often than not, they do not possess the necessary resources, administrative and leadership capacities to effectively address such problems. Consequently, in many developing countries public administration capacity in local governments is generally very weak posing a threat to the achievement of the MDGs.

Poverty, illiteracy, gender inequality, child mortality, HIV/AIDs, malaria and other diseases are prevalent at local levels, leading to the belief that this is where efforts to achieve MDGs are best suited. The workshop provides DESA with an opportunity to engage high level policy makers in Africa, including Ministers responsible for local governments, senior local government officials and development partners, who will eventually champion implementation of ensuing strategies, to propose standards of excellence that need to be further developed to serve as a framework for guiding effective public administration in local governments.

During the same period, DESA through DPADM in collaboration with the African Public Sector Human Resource Managers’ Network (APS-HRMnet) will also hold an Expert Group Meeting (EGM) on “Strategies for attracting the best talent in the Public Service in Africa”. The quality of human resources in the public sector is critical to the development of any country and to the achievement of the MDGs and other internationally agreed development objectives. Global, regional and national commitments to sustainable development and poverty reduction need human capacities as the translation of such goals into tangible results is in the hands of human resources. It is through the knowledge, know-how and skills, networks and attitudes of human resources that services are planned and delivered, critical innovations conceived and realized and needed reforms carried out.

The objective of the EGM is two-fold:

i) to highlight the challenges related to attracting and retaining high performing public servants to serve in the public service, and especially in local governments in rural Africa

ii) to propose strategies for attracting and retaining the best talent to boost improvement in the delivery of public service at local level.

The EGM will provide a forum for sharing knowledge as well as provide advice to policy formulators, especially human resource managers in the public service, on elements of policies and strategies that should be instituted to attract and retain the best human resources to serve at local level for effective implementation of government policies and programs especially those related to the achievement of the MDGs.

For more information:
http://www.unpan.org/DPADM/Home/tabid/420/language/en-US/Default.aspx

Burkina Faso National Seminar on Census Data Analysis to be held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on 14-16 November

The main objective of the national seminar is to provide an opportunity for the staff members of the Burkina Faso Institut National de la Statistique et de la Démographie to further analyze data from the 2006 population and housing census of Burkina Faso on selected topics.

The ultimate objective is to promote greater analysis and dissemination of the data collected from the 2006 census. The national seminar will cover the following topics:

(i) population projections at municipal level,

ii) analysis of data on migration, and

(iii) analysis of data on educational characteristics.

After the seminar, participants are expected to produce thematic analytical reports, based on analyses generated during the seminar.

For more information:

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/sources/cwp2010/docs.htm

UN Sub-regional Workshop on Census Data Evaluation will be held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on 14-17 November

DESA’s Statistics Division in cooperation with the Cambodian Institute of Statistics will organize a Workshop on Census Data Evaluation. This workshop will be organized within the framework of the UN/DESA Development Account project for strengthening the statistical capacity of countries in South-East Asia. The objectives of the workshop are to strengthen the technical capacity of the participating countries to identify types of errors in census data and to apply methods of evaluating the quality of census data. Representatives from national statistical offices of Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Timor-Leste and Viet Nam are invited to the workshop. The workshop will also provide the forum to discuss national practices and to exchange experiences and lessons learned among the participating countries.

For more information: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/default.htm

Regional Workshop on CensusInfo arranged in New Delhi, India on 28-30 November

Organized by DESA’s Statistics Division in collaboration with the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, the Regional Workshop on CensusInfo is expected to gather representatives from about 20 countries from the Asian region. It is intended to provide a forum for sharing national practices and experiences in the dissemination of census data as well as highlight CensusInfo’s potential as a platform for disseminating census data at any geographical level.

The workshop will demonstrate the various processes involved in the adaptation of CensusInfo, including the preparation of CensusInfo template and database, importing data, language translation and customization of the software package. The workshop sessions will also include hands-on training on using the CensusInfo User Interface and Database Administration applications.

For more information: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/default.htm

Focusing on statistics in Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA) and South and East Europe (SEE) region, this workshop will take place in Kiev, Ukraine on 29 November – 2 December

DESA’s Statistics Division, in collaboration with the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), is organizing this workshop on the implementation of the 2008 SNA, hosted by the State Statistical Committee of Ukraine. The purpose is to initiate the formulation of an implementation plan for the 2008 SNA and supporting economic statistics in the EECCA and SEE region with the objective of developing comparable economic statistics for monitoring the integration of their economies.

The regional plan will be part of the global implementation programme for the 2008 SNA and supporting statistics. The workshop will also discuss the treatment of conceptual issues, such as the recording of financial services and research and development in the national accounts. The expected outcome is consensus among participants on the implementation of the 2008 SNA.

For more information: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/newsletter/globalstat_unsd_calendar.htm

On 19 October, UNDESA officially launched a new UN Office for Sustainable Development in Incheon, Republic of Korea

The Office, housed in Yonsei University, is co-sponsored by UN DESA, the Korean Ministry of Environment, the City of Incheon and Yonsei University.

It will serve as training and research institution and a centre for pooling together all knowledge on sustainable development. In addition, it will provide a sustainable development knowledge portal uniquely integrating the three pillars of sustainable development—economic growth, improving the quality of life, and protecting the environment.

As a resource center, it will also provide training and capacity building by organizing training programmes for national representatives and major groups from developing countries to advance the sustainable development agenda and enhance the implementation of sustainable development goals and targets.

The event was attended by Mr. Sha Zukang, DESA’s Under-Secretary-General, and the Rio+20 Secretary-General and Ms. Yoo Young Sook, Minister of Environment of the Republic of Korea and other high-level officials.

For more information: http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/