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to dealing with population issues from an integrated approach and monitoring them effectively. The
measure also highlights the need to ensure that the institutional structure for population and development
issues explicitly includes mechanisms to guarantee participation by civil society. In this regard, priority
measure 99 is closely linkedwith prioritymeasure 107 in the same chapter of this guide.
Creating and maintaining a permanent institutional structure and a mechanism for interagency
coordinationwill generally require such lines of action as these:
•
Define the institutions that are to comprise the mechanism, and their roles, depending on the
population issues to be addressed.
•
Designate the institution that will be responsible for coordination, and its roles (including its
role as focal point for monitoring implementation of theMontevideoConsensus on Population
and Development and as interlocutor with the Regional Conference, and serving as liaison
among theother institutions).
•
Create the mechanisms for achieving such coordination, to the extent possible with legal or
formal backing.
•
Establishmechanisms and procedures for including civil society organizations.
•
Allocate the necessary budgetary resources for financing the coordinating institution and the
coordinationmechanisms.
In addition,measure 3 of chapterA provides greater detail on possible, lines of action, targets and
tentative indicators for implementation of the institutional structure for population anddevelopment.
Buildingmore robust information sources
The question of sources and systems of information on population and development is addressed
in priority measures 102, 103 and 104. This is again a cross-cutting issue that arises throughout the
MontevideoConsensus on Population andDevelopment and is therefore dealt with in various chapters of
this guide. It is recognized that the region has made substantial progress in boosting governments’
capacities to collect, process, analyse and disseminate sociodemographic information, and in particular
that obtained through population censuses. However, there are still challenges when it comes to the
adequate disaggregation and geographical coding needed to characterize specific population groups and
territorial subdivisions so as to integrate approaches such as a gender, interculturalism, and the growing
need for local and participatory planning. As well, it is essential to formulate and strengthen legal and
regulatory frameworks for the regular conduct of censuses and the use of vital statistics and other
administrative records that can be of great helpwith topics that are difficult tomeasure.
As in the case of the institutional structure, the information aspect also poses the need for
systemic treatment of sources and of data and coordination among the entities producing them, in order to
avoid overlap and dispersal of sources and data and thereby enhance their quality, relevance and
timeliness, while at the same time economizing on resources.
