Abstract

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by members states of the United Nations in September 2015. One of the major principles of the SDGs is “Leave No One Behind”.  As such SDG monitoring requires data from all population groups, particularly the most vulnerable and most unreachable. This poses a challenge to governments in terms of collecting data from such groups to monitor status of SDGs. There are a number of challenges to collecting data from such populations, particularly in low income countries. One such challenge is lack of a framework to assess data gaps. Using SDG Goal 3 as a Case Study, this paper proposes a framework which governments, policy makers, academicians, students and development agencies can use to assess data gaps. The framework requires identifying attributes related to Enabling Environment-Supply-Demand-Quality for specific human development programme areas (examples in SDG Goal 3 are maternal health, child health, immunization, health systems strengthening, and others). With the principle of leave no one behind, each attribute is disaggregated as much as is possible in relation to drivers of inequity such as geography, religion, disability, ethnicity, wealth and education levels among others. Apart from a number of papers that have articulated lack of data for SDG monitoring, this is the first time that a framework for systematically identifying data gaps has been established.

Key words: Dat gaps, SDGs.