Qatar a model for sustainable development: UN

The United Nations (UN) has chosen Qatar as a model for Arab countries in the implementation of MARS for the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).The SDG team at the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) said Qatar has been selected as a model for the use of MARS application (Monitoring Application for Reporting on SDGs), which is an application for monitoring and reporting on sustainable development goals in the Arab region.The UN commends the completion of a national network in Qatar for the focal points of the 2030 SDGs. Qatar is the only country that completed the establishment of the network in a record time of four months, from March to July 2020. The network consists of 123 data providers (focal point of the 2030 SDGs).The MARS application enables national statistical systems in the Arab region to manage data flow and facilitate the process of reporting data and information that are extracted from the administrative records of national agencies through the SDG focal points (data providers).All of this is performed in line with the UN statistical calendar for reporting, i.e. the start and end date of the national communications. Later on, this exemplary experience will be generalised to other Arab countries.In line with the SDG team’s task to monitor the agenda for sustainable development in Arab countries, it presented a document at the 15th session of the Statistical Commission, held in Beirut on 16-17 November 2022 on "Improving monitoring of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: Institutional Environment, and Production and Dissemination of Data”, which overviews the progress made in improving monitoring of the 2030 agenda in the Arab region. Qatar was represented in this session by the Planning and Statistics Authority (PSA).The document commended the experience of Qatar in establishing a national network for sustainable development goals consisting of national entities or the so-called data and information providers to facilitate the process of reporting data and information coming from the UN.The document also indicated that Qatar is one of the advanced countries in the region in publishing national data on the UN databases through a special platform to monitor the sustainable development goals by uploading 169 indicators and 6,960 variables.The PSA has issued five statistical reports on sustainable development goals since the announcement of the SDGs at the UN in 2015. These reports monitor the progress of sustainable development indicators in Qatar, which serves researchers, planners and policy makers in this field. It has also issued an explanatory infographic of the SDGs, which present the indicators in a simple and easy-to-understand manner.