Explaining the Importance of Children's data, One Region at a Time

The State Statistics Committee (SSC) in partnership with UNICEF and the United Nations Office of the Resident Coordinator (UNRCO) in Turkmenistan completed a series of workshops for the representatives of the health, education, and social protection departments of the capital and velayats on Sustainable Development Goals and children.

From June to November this year, a team of specialists from UNICEF, UNRCO and SSC reached each region of the country with an objective to sensitize relevant social sector representatives on SDGs, child related indicators and UNICEF data collection tools, such as the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) on the situation of children and women in Turkmenistan. The importance of baseline was underlined for the measurement and reporting of child related indicators in SDGs with timely and credible collection of data at etrap, velayat and national level.  

“We take pride in early nationalization of SDGs in Turkmenistan, which shows the country’s commitment to leaving no child behind,” said Gozel Charyyeva, Head of the Demography Department of the State Statistics Committee. “The Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey and other internationally comparable data that we will collect with support of UNICEF, will serve as a basis to measure the progress in the area related to children’s wellbeing in Turkmenistan,” she said.

Turkmenistan adopted 187 SDG indicators, of which 55 are considered child-related. UNICEF, as the global leader of data for children, is the custodian for 10 global SDG indicators and co-custodian for further seven indicators. Better disaggregated data is necessary to meet the commitment to leave no one behind. In this role, UNICEF supports countries in generating, analyzing and using data for these indicators for all their citizens.

“At the early stage of SDGs implementation in Turkmenistan, it is important that we ensure using data to drive better results for children to support decisions, target investments and interventions in order to reach the most vulnerable children. Together with State Statistics Committee, I am pleased that UNICEF is taking this wider UN mandate for reaching the SDGs for all children. The process of generating evidence on results for children must inspire everyone, hence the more we engage on building capacities at all levels, the better it pays back to the country in achievement of SDGs,” said Shaheen Nilofer, UNICEF Representative in Turkmenistan.

As a step forward, the Government of Turkmenistan and UNICEF are carrying out an assessment that will look into availability and disaggregation of latest data to serve as baselines for SDG indicators, focusing primarily on child-related indicators.