Estonia
Statement by Ms Minna –Liina Lind, Deputy Permanent Representative, Permanent Mission of the Republic of Estonia to the United Nations at the 3rd Session of Intergovernmental Negotiations on the Post-2015 Development Agenda
March 24, 2015
My delegation fully aligns itself with the statement of the European Union. We would like to underline a few additional points.
The Sustainable Development Goals and Targets is an outcome of a lengthy negotiation process last year and the proposal from the Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which shall be the main basis for integrating SDGs into the post-2015 development agenda, while recognizing that other inputs will also be considered, as agreed by the General Assembly. However, we appreciate the efforts of the United Nations System and are ready to carefully consider the results of the technical assessment of the targets.
We thank the United Nations Statistical Commission for its proposals and on-going work; we support the suggested time-line and roadmap for elaborating the framework of indicators for the implementation of the SDGs. Estonia considers identifying high-quality indicators for the SDGs a technical process, which is time consuming and iterative, and requires continual evaluation and refinement of data sources and methodologies. We endorse the formation of the Inter-agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators composed of Member States and including regional and international agencies as observers.
We stress that the indicators should use the existing integrated statistical frameworks and lessons learnt as much as possible to avoid duplicative effort. We believe it is important to take into account inter-linkages between goals and targets and to develop multidimensional indicators.
We note that the indicators should be explicitly linked to all targets across the entire scope of the new development agenda reflecting their measurability and feasibility. The indicators should be based on disaggregated data and gender and age sensitive.
We agree that the global indicators should be limited in number in order to achieve the efficient implementation of the SDG-s. However, the reduction of indicators should not hamper adequate progress assessment across all policy areas and targets.
Estonia supports developing complementary regional, national and thematic indicators. Based on the specifics of individual countries, the indicators could be augmented to measure progress toward particular national priorities.
On the final remark, I would like stress the importance of innovation and ICT in the review, accountability, monitoring process. In Estonia, we have already been employing mobile positioning technology for some years in order to inquire data. The method is simple, cost efficient, reliable (everybody has a mobile phone) and doesn’t impose any additional administrative burden.
Thank you!
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