Outcome ESA_D_2.2

Gender statistics, sex-disaggregated data and knowledge products are produced and used to inform policy making, advocacy and accountability for delivering results on gender equality and empowerment of women and girls in ESA region

ESA provided technical support to Instituto Nacional de Estatistica (INE) in Mozambique for the development of their National Gender Statistics Development Plan and to the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and its eight member states: Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda to develop an IGAD gender statistics strategy. The strategy will be used to guide IGAD gender statistics planning processes as well as reource mobilization. We have also made signfiicant progress in documenting the uptake and use of gender data in the Learn from series covering cases of uptake and use of gender data in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya through focus group discussions with users and producers of statistics in those countries.

Gender statistics, sex-disaggregated data and knowledge products are produced and used to inform policy making, advocacy and accountability for delivering results on gender equality and empowerment of women and girls in ESA region

Du ring the reporting period, substantial progress was made in enhancing gender statistics, Women, Peace and Security (WPS) data systems, and the use of administrative data for both policy and statistical purposes across regions. A key achievement was the completion of the integrated assessment of gender data and WPS data system capacities in IGAD countries. This milestone followed additional national validation processes that improved the rigor, quality, and comparability of seven country reports (Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan, Djibouti, and Somalia). Throughout this process, ESARO played a central coordinating and technical leadership role —guiding methodological design, facilitating country engagement, ensuring alignment with regional standards, and providing quality assurance during national validations. The resulting integrated regional report and individual country publications now serve as robust, evidence-based resources that will inform and shape regional and national investments in gender-responsive and WPS data systems going forward. Substantial advances were also made in improving the measurement of femicide within criminal justice data systems in Ethiopia and Kenya. Through the testing of the UNODC–UN Women statistical framework, national stakeholders in both countries enhanced their understanding of the importance of standardized statistical definitions and system alignment. The assessments revealed that existing police and justice data systems are not yet fit for producing reliable, comparable, and replicable femicide statistics, underscoring the need for digitization and the integration of additional contextual variables. These findings have laid a critical foundation for future reforms and capacity development, with the Ethiopia report scheduled for final design and dissemination in Q1. At the global and regional levels, the Women Count programme played a catalytic role in advancing knowledge on administrative and statistical register systems. This included convening a global deep-dive webinar that brought together participants from multiple regions to exchange best practices on register-based statistics, data architecture standards, and quality assessment methodologies. Complementary efforts strengthened collaboration and thought leadership on administrative data through the organization of a high-level Stats Café session with ESCAP, ongoing co-convening and technical contributions to the Collaborative on Administrative Data (CAD), and inputs into strategic proposals linked to the UN Statistical Commission. Additional technical reviews—covering data protection legislation in the Maldives and national statistical planning in Comoros—further supported the development of inclusive, high-quality, and rights-based statistical systems.

Gender statistics, sex-disaggregated data and knowledge products are produced and used to inform policy making, advocacy and accountability for delivering results on gender equality and empowerment of women and girls in ESA region

Women Count provided technical and financial support to Intituto Nacional de Mozambique for the publication of 11 provincial reports on the situation of women and men. These reports will be made available on the INE website, as per this example in quarter1 of 2024. These publications contain the main source of administrative data with the best regularity available in the country (annual) and first edition at provincial level that helps monitoring Government's efforts in promoting equality in Mozambique. The completion of these publications was driven by the workshop, supported by UN Women, which took place from 04th to 08th December 2023, in Ponta de Ouro. In Rwanda the Rwanda CO received financial support from the ESARO to work with the Rwanda National Institute of Statistics (NISR) to produce and publish 17 reports based on Census data. One of these reports was the monograph on gender. All of these reports can be accessed at the link below: https://statistics.gov.rw/datasource/fifth-population-and-housing-census-2022