Collaborate to ensure investments made in statistics – UN SG
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon is urging all partners and stakeholders to collaborate to ensure investments are made in the field of statistics towards the achievement of sustainable development.
The UN Secretary-General made the call in a statement to mark World Statistics Day which is being observed today . World Statistics Day follows Caribbean Statistics Day on 15 October.
On this World Statistics Day, I urge all partners and stakeholders to work together to ensure that the necessary investments are made, adequate technical capacity is built, new data sources are explored and innovative processes are applied to give all countries the comprehensive information systems they need to achieve sustainable development,” he said.
The Secretary-General said that there was need to ensure that everyone was counted, especially the most poor and vulnerable.
No child’s birth shall remain unregistered. No incidence of disease, no matter how remote the location, shall remain unrecorded. We need local statistics to ensure that every child has access to education and we need global statistics to monitor the overall effects of climate change,” he said in the message.
This is the second year that World Statistics Day is being observed. According to the UN, this year’s theme emphasises the critical role of high-quality official statistical information in analysis and informed policy decision-making in support of sustainable development. It also reflects the importance of sustainable national statistical capacity to produce reliable and timely statistics and indicators measuring a country’s progress.
The UN General Assembly decided with resolution 69/282 to celebrate the day every five years from now on.
The Assembly also noted that 2015 marks the bicentenary of the birth of George Boole, whose work on the application of the principles of logic as a form of algebra underpins modern computer science.
The first World Statistics Day was celebrated in 2010, as decided in resolution 64/267, and was deemed an overwhelming success, with activities organized in more than 130 Member States and by at least 40 international and regional organizations and entities.