20 June 2016

In March, the UN Statistical Commission agreed upon a global indicator framework for measuring SDG progress and the promise to leave no one behind.

However, a concrete commitment to develop new methodologies and disaggregated data to ensure that the SDGs will benefit all children is yet to be seen.

For this, over 175 children’s and disabilities rights organisations and academics from across the world have intensified their demands on the UN through a joint open letter, to ensure that all children are counted as part of the SDGs. The letter highlights worrying data gaps on the world’s most vulnerable children - children living outside of households and children without parental care.

Data are more than numbers: they define the boundaries of society between who is represented and who is forgotten by public policy, and eventually set the demarcation line of social inequality.

The letter calls on the UN to put children living outside of households and/or without parental care on the radar of SDG monitoring system, and to improve and expand data collection methodologies to ensure all children are represented. A first step would be that the IAEG-SDGs working group on data disaggregation develops ‘care status’ or ‘care setting’ as a disaggregated data category.

Yet, more investment in strengthening statistical capacity at national and international level is urgently needed to make official data portray the genuine reality of these children, and to ensure that public policy develops adequate responses for them and protect their human rights.