Development Indicators

In its ongoing deliberations on the "Integrated and coordinated implementation and follow-up of major United Nations conferences and summits at all levels", the Economic and Social Council, in its resolution 2000/27 of 28 July 2000, invites the Statistical Commission to serve as the intergovernmental focal point for the review of the indicators used by the United Nations system. The report prepared by the Statistics Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (E/1999/11, English , Arabic, Chinese, French, Spanish, Russian) assessed the present status of development indicators at the country and the international level and was a result of a collaborative effort by selected countries, relevant United Nations Secretariat units, a wide range of United Nations funds and programmes, specialized agencies and international institutions. The first draft of the report was discussed and reviewed by an expert group meeting held in March 1999 in New York and by the Statistical Commission during its thirtieth session. This report includes the proposed indicators of the common country assessments.

A follow-up report prepared for the Statistical Commission at its thirty-first session contains an update on the indicator debate at the substantive session of 2000 of the Economic and Social Council in July 2000 (E/CN.3/2001/16) (174 KB) . The report describes the activities of the United Nations Statistics Division in support of the implementation of the Council resolution 2000/27. The Statistics Division activities, inter alia, focus on developing an agreed process to rationalize and harmonize the various sets of conference indicators and on strengthening national capacity to produce relevant indicators for policy decision-making. This report also contains a proposed action plan for the period 2001-2002 (see Annex II).

For further information or comments, contact:

Statistics Division
United Nations
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