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The development of sociodemographic information is in fact stressed as one of the key lines of
action throughout theMontevideo Consensus on Population and Development and this guide. The more
general lines of action include the following:
•
Develop countries’ capacity to produce, disseminate and use sociodemographic information
for formulating public plans and policies in the various sectors.
•
Develop forward-looking information for assessing the economic and social impact of
population dynamics as a way of generating awareness of the linkages between population
dynamics and development policies.
•
Ensure that statistics contain all the disaggregations needed to identify and characterize
population groups of relevance for public policies, incorporating the gender focus and the
intercultural perspective, such as adolescents —including those under age 15— and youth,
older persons, persons with disabilities, persons with care needs, persons subject to violence,
women, indigenous peoples andAfro-descendent populations, populations exposed to natural
disaster risks, migrants and displaced persons, amongothers.
•
Focus efforts on democratizing access to all databases, for example by developing online
consultation and processing tools.
•
Maintain a constant process of training in the preparation and use of analyses of
sociodemographic information.
Priority measure 103 makes explicit the requirement to have sufficient human and financial
resources to improve population information systems, in keeping with targets 17.18 and 17.19 of the
SDGs relating to the availability of timely, reliable and high-quality data disaggregated by groups so as to
measure, through the preparation of indicators, the progress achieved toward sustainable development. In
the context of the recommendations of the Advisory Group on a Data Revolution for Sustainable
Development, it is important to work in coordination with the Statistical Conference of the Americas
(SCA), and especiallywith itsworking groups on population, gender statistics, institutional strengthening,
monitoring of the SDGs and statistics on childhood and adolescence. In addition, the support of agencies
such as UNFPA, UNICEF, PAHO, the IDB and theWorld Bank is vital. It is also important to achieve
financial and technical sustainability for a set of existing tools for generating and processing
sociodemographic information on countries of the region, for example the REDATAM software and the
various regional databases developed byCELADE.
Training and capacity-building onpopulationanddevelopmentmatters
The issue of training of the human resources for giving continuity to population and development
activities in support of theMontevideoConsensus is recognized in prioritymeasure 106, where countries
agreed to design and implement training strategies in the area of population anddevelopment. The need to
train human resources in population and development issues has been expressed systematically and
urgently by the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. The shortage of trained personnel can be
explained in part by the fact that, while formal courses and programmes do exist in some countries of the
region, they are insufficient to ensure generational succession or to offset the leakage inherent in the high
turnover rate among government officials. This shortage is critical for national statistics offices
attempting to carry out population censuses, and also for the various sectoral and development planning
institutions that are unable to include population aspects in public plans and policies. Limitations on the
availability of training make it very difficult for the officials responsible for population issues to have a
comprehensive vision of these issues. The training of human resources includes the need to equip civil
