Data on Children and Youth in MENA Region: What is missing? How to fill? Who is responsible?

Data on children in the MENA region is limited and aggregated at the country level and what is available at the lower levels is mostly fragmented, defective and incomplete. This hinders creation of databases and identification of the appropriate indicators. The situation becomes worse when talking about data on urban children.

This paper will identify the data gaps and propose the minimum required sets of indicators, particularly those relating to public and basic services, including education, health, nutrition, social phenomena such as child-labor, street children, and Juvenile delinquencies. The paper will develop an analytical framework to illustrate the types of data required from household surveys & censuses at the local authorities level to provide health & socio-economic indicators for children. The framework will consider the geographical context in which the household and the local communities are located.
The paper will propose other suitable methods to collect basic data or to supplement with more detailed data; these methods could be resorted to, in order to minimize time and cost, keeping precision and accuracy,
The paper will identify the responsible partners and will conclude with recommendations for interventions to strengthen the knowledge base capabilities regarding children in local authorities.