Senior government officials from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region will meet in Cairo, Egypt, on 18 and 19 December at a Capacity Development Workshop on Implementing the Citizen Engagement Self-Assessment Questionnaire (CESAQ).

Findings from the self-assessment will be shared during the 14th Annual General Conference organized by the Arab Administrative Development Organization (ARADO) – League of Arab States.

Achieving inclusive economic, social, sustainable, and peaceful development is dependent on active public participation and on engaging communities and citizens in policy-making processes. This derives from a growing recognition that the involvement of all stakeholders in the design and implementation of public policies that would impact their lives is beneficial. It also considerably reduces risks associated with the lack of trust and dialogue between government and citizens as evidenced from recent events the world over, including the MENA region.

The UN Committee of Experts on Public Administration (CEPA) noted in its 2012 report to the UN Economic and Social Council that the needs in the Arab region were daunting, particularly in light of the transition after the 2011 uprisings. The Committee emphasized the need for the United Nations Secretariat to provide sustained support to countries in the region.

As a response to this recommendation, UN DESA’s Division for Public Administration and Development Management (DPADM) started developing CESAQ. This tool helps governments to assess whether they have measures in place aimed at engaging citizens more directly in the national planning and programme management, as well as their functioning. These measures can progressively assist governments to promote the engagement of citizens in policy design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation to better address sustainable development challenges.

Towards a tailor-made tool for the Arab Region

DPADM has been collaborating with the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) since 2013 to refine CESAQ and test the Arabic version of the questionnaire.

The 14th Annual General Conference of ARADO – Arab League to be held in Cairo on 17-19 December, will include as a side event, the workshop on “Implementing the Citizen Engagement Self-Assessment Questionnaire (CESAQ) in the MENA Region.”

The aim of the workshop is to present an opportunity for providing guidance on the implementation of the CESAQ tool, while conducting its requirements in a controlled examination environment, resulting in strengthening the capacity of leaders in the public sector to assess regulatory, organizational frameworks and channels/modalities for engaging citizens.

The workshop is expected to serve as the initial stage into finalizing the tool for deployment in the MENA region. The participants will examine further capacity development requirements and support needed from the UN and other international and regional organizations.

The first day of the workshop will include a presentation of each component of CESAQ, as well as question and answer sessions and preparations for implementing the self-assessment. The second day will consist of group work on self-assessing preparedness for citizen engagement and participation in the MENA region. Participants will recommend follow-up actions on deploying CESAQ in the region. Workshop rapporteurs are expected to share findings of the self-assessment exercise during the ARADO 14th Annual General Conference.

The workshop is organized by DPADM in collaboration with ESCWA and ARADO.

For more information:
Capacity Development Workshop on Implementing the Citizen Engagement Self-Assessment Questionnaire.

UN DESA’s Division for Social Policy and Development, in collaboration with UN Habitat, UNESCO and the Commonwealth Secretariat, will hold a technical workshop on “Evidence-based Policies on Youth Development in Sub-Saharan Africa” on 3-5 December in Nairobi, Kenya.

The workshop aims to strengthen the capacity of participants to formulate, monitor and evaluate evidence-based policies on youth using quantitative approaches and localization of internationally agreed indicators. Capacity to apply participatory processes with youth organisations will also be enhanced.

Participants in the workshop are expected to join from government ministries, relevant public institutions, and civil society and youth–led organizations.

For more information:

UN DESA’s Division for Social Policy and Development

Within the framework of the International Programme for Accelerating the Improvement of Vital Statistics and Civil Registration Systems, the UN DESA’s Statistics Division, in collaboration with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UN-ECA), is organizing a Workshop on the Principles and Recommendations for a Vital Statistics System, Rev. 3, for English-speaking African countries.

The workshop will be hosted by UN-ECA in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 2 to 5 December. Its main purpose is to provide guidance to countries on the implementation of the new revision of the UN recommendations for the collection and compilation of vital statistics at national level through civil registration and other sources such as population censuses, sample surveys, population registers, and health records, at the same time providing full overview of contemporary international statistical standards and requirements.

At the same time, the event will offer an opportunity for statisticians, on the one side, and civil registrars, on the other, to directly interact and exchange experiences and practices using national civil registration and vital statistics systems as a framework.

For more information: UN DESA’s Statistics Division

UN DESA’s Statistics Division is organizing the first regional workshop within the UN Development Account project “Supporting Developing Countries Measure Progress Towards Achieving a Green Economy” led by the division in collaboration with UNEP, UNIDO, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). It will take place in the ECLAC regional headquarters in Santiago, Chile on 2-5 December.

Recognizing the importance of high quality statistics and their effective use in promoting evidence-based socio-economic policies and achieving internationally agreed goals, the project aims to enhance the national statistical systems’ capacity of its pilot countries to produce good quality, timely and reliable statistics and indicators to inform about progress towards achieving a green economy in the context of sustainable development.

This workshop will serve as an opportunity to strengthen national data production and coordinate efforts for improving underlying environment, energy, agricultural and other statistics, as it will bring together practitioners from the communities of statisticians and policy makers that use and produce such indicators. Moreover, the workshop is important given the current policy context and the emergence of the sustainable development goals in the context of the post 2015 development agenda, as well as national efforts to move towards sustainable development around the world.

Key elements of the workshop will include: a review of potential indicators, suitable for developing countries, that can be used to inform on green economy and sustainable development issues; the sharing of experiences from the assessment exercise in the four pilot countries of the Latin American region; and a more detailed discussion of technical issues in selected areas of statistics that are relevant for the compilation of indicators informing on green economy issues. The workshop will also discuss future steps, in particular priorities for the direct technical assistance to the pilot countries that will take place in the next phase of this project.

A similar workshop will take place in January 2015, for the Asia Pacific region at ESCAP’s headquarters in Bangkok.

For more information:

Supporting developing countries measure progress towards achieving a green economy 

UN DESA’s Statistics Division, in collaboration with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA) and the Jordan Department of Statistics, is organizing a workshop on Integrating a Gender Perspective in the Production of statistics, in Amman, Jordan, from 1 to 4 December.

The workshop aims to train national statisticians on producing gender statistics from available data sources; using data from population censuses for gender analysis; and ways to produce, disseminate and communicate gender statistics to properly inform policies.

The workshop will also foster exchange of national experiences among participating countries.

For more information:

UN DESA’s Statistics Division