UN expert group meeting on guidelines and principles for the development of Disability statistics

Mark Priestley and Stefanos Grammenos, from the ANED core team, attended an expert group meeting of the United Nations Statistics Division at the UN Headquarters in New York (July 2017). The focus for this meeting was the need to revise the UN’s Global Guidelines and Principles for the Development of Disability Statistics, published in 2001.

Examples and issues arising from ANED’s work on monitoring and indicator development were presented to the meeting, including examples of statistics and presentation methods underpinning ANED’s shadowing of key EU2020 targets on employment, education and risk of poverty or social exclusion.

Updating of the UN guidance is needed now for a number of reasons, including the context of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the mainstreaming of disability issues in monitoring the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The revised publication, anticipated by the end of 2018, will provide guidance statistical offices and agencies on how to produce disability statistics, enabling more countries to meet increasing demands for quality data to measure and monitor progress towards full participation in human rights and inclusion in development programmes.