The United Nations is inching closer toward establishing a global framework to measure the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, more than one year after the universal poverty, health, inequality and climate change agenda was approved.
But lack of available data and clarity on how these ambitious targets can actually be measured will likely leave the new U.N. monitoring system in flux for the next several years. That uncertainty could make it challenging to track progress on benchmark goals such as universal health coverage and whether violence against children has decreased leading up to 2030.
“It will be a process of refining the message and refining the indicators,” said Tom Slaymaker, senior statistics and monitoring specialist at UNICEF. “This is a long-term project and we have to be realistic about what we can expect to be able to report in the short- and medium-term.”