Making Every Woman and Girl Count for Sustainable Development Joint GoSL-UN-Donor Virtual Roundtable

 The representative of Statistics Sierra Leone Statistician-General,

Excellencies from Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies,

Distinguished representatives from the Diplomatic Corps and Development Partners,

Colleagues from the United Nations family,

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen,

It is a pleasure to welcome you to the roundtable on Gender Statistics, as part of the Making Every Woman and Girl Count Initiative.

Firstly, let me congratulate the Government of Sierra Leone and the United Nations for the enduring partnership and quality of cooperation to ensure that Every Woman and Girl Counts. On behalf of the United Nations in Sierra Leone, we commend the leadership of the Minister of Gender and Children’s Affairs and the commitment of the Statistician-General to prioritize gender statistics.

Statistics that adequately reflect the lived realities of women and men, girls and boys—gender statistics in short—are indispensable tools for developing evidence-based policies and solutions to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment. Yet, 80 per cent of the indicators for gender equality across the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) lack data.

Gaps in gender data and the lack of trend data make it difficult to assess and monitor the direction and pace of progress for women and girls. Adequate gender data is not just an accountability tool or to solely monitor progress.  When data is not used to inform policy and advocacy, it leads to low demand, which in turn reduces the incentive to produce gender statistics. However, when statistical capacity development and activities are open, relevant, timely and inclusive, gender data can drive progress.

Overall, gender data availability remains low. For Africa, less than one-third of the data required for the Minimum Set of Gender Indicators for Africa are available.

As a key step to address this, UN Women has been actively engaged with the Ministry of Gender and Children’s Affairs and Statistics Sierra Leone to collect quality gender statistics since 2019. One fundamental achievement of the past two years has been the national assessment of gender statistics in the country. The findings of that assessment will guide today’s roundtable.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen,

Globally, the Making Every Woman and Girl Count initiative aims to address inequality and promote human rights in development efforts, while underlining the importance of women in the delivery of Agenda 2030.

In Sierra Leone, it will support the achievement of the implementation of the national gender equality and women’s empowerment policy by addressing the identified major challenges in the 2019 national assessment on gender statistics. 

Our objective today is to Expand the WomenCount partnership to you all, starting with delineating context-sound actionable priorities which will generate tangible gains toward the acceleration of progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. Without gender statistics, we cannot achieve the SDGs.

I am proud of what has been achieved together thus far—the foundation laid to facilitate the achievement of the objective of today’s roundtable.

On behalf of the UN System in Sierra Leone, I wish to express our profound gratitude to the institutions and partners represented at this important session. I look forward to our fruitful deliberations.

Thank you.