Sultanate to host meeting on disability measurement

MUSCAT: The United Nations Regional Meeting on Disability Measurement and Statistics in support of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the 2020 World Population and Housing Census Programme will be held in Muscat starting today till Thursday under the auspices of Dr Khalifa bin Abdullah al Barwani, CEO of the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).

The Sultanate’s official statistical agency, NCSI, will address the gathering at the opening session along with United Nations ESCWA (Economic and Social Commission for West Asia) and UNSD (UN Statistics Division).

There will be sessions on disabilityrelated SDG indicators for global monitoring; disability statistics, policies and programmes in the ESCWA region; ongoing international initiatives on standards for disability measurement; a presentation on the questions used to measure disability during censuses in 2010; and national experiences in the approaches used to measure disability through censuses.

Sessions on measurement of disability through sample surveys; sources for generating data on disability for national needs and SDG indicators and strategies for meeting data needs for disability-related SDG indicators will also be held during the meeting. The Sultanate will join other regional countries in presenting national experiences on approaches used to measure disability through censuses.

Country presentations will focus on the questions used to measure disability, reasons for the choice of questions, testing of the questions, experience in how the questions worked in the field, use of proxy respondents, translation of questions, use of scaled response categories, and results obtained.

The two-day meet will be closed with a discussion on the ways forward to achieve the goals in the field of disability measurement and statistics, followed by closing remarks by NCSI, ESCWA and UNSD.