Regional meet concludes with call to improve use of data for children
Statisticians and child rights experts converge on the 30th anniversary of UNICEF’s ‘TransMonEE’ programme

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ANKARA/GENEVA, 2 November 2022: Data specialists and policy makers from across Europe and Central Asia discussed a regional monitoring framework on child rights at a meet organised by UNICEF in collaboration with the Turkish Statistical Institute in Ankara on 1-2 November.
The meeting marked three decades of the UNICEF led initiative ‘Transformative Monitoring for Enhanced Equity’, or ‘TransMonEE’, which is a knowledge partnership among the National Statistics Offices (NSOs) in the region aimed at improving access and use of data to achieve better results for children.
“In the past thirty years, TransMonEE has drawn the attention of all stakeholders to critical issues for children and highlighted data gaps focusing on children most likely to be left out of development. It has helped define policy actions as well as improvements in the data collection mechanisms. UNICEF is as concerned about the situation of children as it was 30 years ago. The COVID-19 pandemic has hugely affected not only the services for children but has also brought different dimensions and demands on national statistical systems that you are all part of,” said Afshan Khan, UNICEF Regional Director, addressing the gathering.
The recent developments in the landscape of data on children and the latest guidance of the Conference of European Statistics on Children were deliberated upon by the experts attending the meeting.
Erhan Çetinkaya, President of the Turkish Statistical Institute, emphasized in his speech the importance of improving statistics on children to defend children's rights and highlighted the challenges children face in today's world. He gave brief information about the Child Profile Research project, which was initiated jointly with the Ministry of Family and Social Services and the UNICEF Turkey Office, to increase the availability of data on children, as well as the TÜİK Child page.
Over 120 representatives of NSOs, relevant ministries, child rights coordination bodies from select countries, partners, researchers and senior officials of UNICEF and other UN agencies actively participated in the two-day meet.
Note for editors:
- The review of the most recent concluding observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child to State parties has pointed out that all countries, without exception, have received at least one recommendation to improve the availability or disaggregation of data on children. Forty-one countries have been recommended to improve data disaggregation while thirty countries need to develop or include child-specific indicators in the national data collection framework.
- TransMonEE aims to strengthen the coverage, quality, disaggregation, accessibility and use of data on children, across a breadth of areas relevant to children’s rights and wellbeing, aligned with the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.