Tunisia cities develop frameworks for monitoring, reporting on SDG 11

With support from UN-Habitat’s Global Urban Observatory and the Africa Center for Statistics at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), two cities in Tunisia are developing frameworks for monitoring and reporting on SDG 11. Specialized training workshops conducted in the cities of Monastir and Tozeur were attended by high level government officials, demonstrating commitment and goodwill.
The specialized training is designed to enhance existing capacity to monitor and report on SDG 11 using various statistical tools and techniques as part of a larger project to build country level capacity being implemented in four pilot countries by UN-Habitat in collaboration with regional commissions. Through the SDG11: Monitoring and Reporting on Human Settlement Indicators in Africa and Latin America programme UN-Habitat, UNECA and ECLAC are supporting the governments of Botswana and Tunisia in Africa and Ecuador and Colombia in Latin America to test the concept of using a national sample of cities to report performance on all urban SDGs indicators.
City officials were introduced to tools developed by UN-Habitat to support SDG 11 monitoring and reporting including spatial and non-spatial methods of data collection and measurement for all indicators including the City Prosperity Index (CPI) and the National Sample of Cities. The outcome was better understanding of SDG 11 and its data and reporting requirements. This will contribute to overall national and global monitoring and reporting as the tools UN-Habitat is employing to support pilot countries will enable all Member States to harmonize reporting on SDG 11.
The two workshops were attended by more than 60 representatives of various local authorities and respective national statistical agencies. Both cities are already making strides towards SDG 11 monitoring with Monastir having set up an urban observatory to collect and collate data with specific focus on environmental indicators.
At the end of the workshops in Tunisia the two pilot cities had developed a workplan to guide data collection and analysis which would culminate in establishing an urban indicators database and a CPI profile report for each city. UN-Habitat and UNECA will continue working with the pilot cities in Tunisia and Botswana to ensure that capacity is adequately developed and that they can be used as reference points for the rest of the continent and the world.