Beirut-Amman, 29 October 2019 (ESCWA)--Today, a regional workshop on disability statistics for the Arab region kicked off in Amman with a view to expanding statistics coverage so no one is left behind.
The workshop is organized by ESCWA and will be held from 29 to 31 October, in collaboration with the Arab Institute for Training and Research in Statistics (AITRS), the Washington Group on Disability Statistics and the International Labour Organization (ILO).
AITRS Director General, Hadi Al-Saidi, stressed the importance of exchanging national and regional experiences and facilitating cooperation within the Arab region to produce better data for people with disabilities.
He also pointed out problems of data quality and availability for monitoring and evaluation, especially for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2, 4 and 5 related to ending hunger, ensuring quality education and achieving gender equality, respectively, highlighting difficulties to obtain comprehensive and frequent statistics from administrative resources.
The speaker stressed the need to unify terms related to disability, and to increase training and exchange of expertise among Arab statistical offices, praising the great efforts exerted by ESCWA and Washington Group for that purpose. He also advised Arab countries to use the evidence produced by the United Nations and the Washington Group.
Neda Jaafar from ESCWA stressed the significance of this issue, both from a statistics viewpoint and at the humanitarian and social levels. She added that ESCWA recommended coordination among various stakeholders to improve the production and quality of disability statistics. She lauded the role of AITRS in this regard, as it had organized several training workshops on disability statistics during the past years.
The workshop was attended by 14 participants representing statistical agencies and centres working on disability in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, the State of Palestine, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic and Tunisia, as well as the Higher Council for the Rights of People with Disabilities in Jordan.
For more information:
-Ms Rania Harb, Public Information Assistant, +961-70-008-879; email: harb1@un.org