UNODC and UNICEF join efforts to monitor SDG 2030 in Caribbean countries

From May 8 to 16, personnel from the Center of Excellence participated in the workshop organized by the United Nations International Emergency Fund for Children (UNICEF), the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and the Economic Commission for America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in the city of Bridgetown, Barbados on the Monitoring of Social Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in the Caribbean and the Multiple Indicators Cluster Surveys (MICS).

During this workshop, it was discussed the information gaps that exist in the Eastern Caribbean countries with respect to the SDG 2030 and what technical assistance can be offered to them by UNICEF and the different international organizations, including the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), to support countries to produce information according to their international mandate and the social indicators of which each organization is custodian. In addition to this, training was conducted on the MICS, which is a household survey initiative that has enabled many countries to produce robust and internationally comparable statistics from a variety of indicators in the areas of health, education, children protection and HIV / AIDS, whose findings have been used as a basis for policy decisions and program interventions for women and children around the world.

In order to join forces and improve the availability of data worldwide, an Inter-agency collaboration was carried out between UNODC and UNICEF to add a special module of victimization in line with international standards such as the Manual on Victimization Surveys (2010) and the International Classification of Crimes for Statistical Purposes (ICCS). The 17 participating beneficiary countries were: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, Saint Lucia, St. Kits & Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and the Caicos Islands, Suriname, Guyana, Belize, Jamaica and Saint Martin. It should be noted that the integration of the victimization module will not only be promoted in the Caribbean countries, but globally for future implementations of the MICS.