UAE global standings affected by lack of data, say UN officials

Authorities across the Emirates should work together to make sure reliable statistics can be produced for international agencies, officials said.

Dr Magued Osman speaks after launching a report by the United Nations Development Programme and the UAE General Women’s Union in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday. Satish Kumar / The National

ABU DHABI // The UAE’s progress as a nation is not being properly reflected in global rankings in the absence of accurate data, United Nations and Emirati officials say.

Government departments and authorities across the Emirates should work together to ensure that reliable statistics can be produced and made available for international agencies, they said.

The issue was highlighted at the launch of a report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the UAE General Women’s Union on Wednesday, which focused on the gender gap in society.

Dr Magued Osman, author of the UN report and managing director of Baseera, the Egyptian centre for public opinion research, said the UAE should be higher up the global rankings for gender equality, for example, than its own figures suggest.

“There is very clear evidence that some of the information disseminated by international organisations are not reflecting the achievements that took place recently in the country,” he said.

The reason is the lack of latest data for the seven emirates.

“International organisations failed to report and reflect these achievements in one way or the other because the data isn’t available,” he said.

Dr Osman estimated that up to 40 per cent of the statistics available were out of date.

“Sometimes you have indicators for one or two emirates but not the whole country and so international organisations usually report data that is old or not at all,” he said.

“This is not doing justice to the country in terms of its achievements and development.”

The most “striking” example is statistics provided for pregnancies among married Emirati teenagers.

The figures showed that in the UAE the number of pregnant teenagers is 33 per 1,000 – higher than Saudi Arabia and all of the other GCC nations.

Although uncontroversial, Dr Osman said the figures “didn’t make sense”.

It was discovered that the most recent statistics were from 2009.

And while most countries provided the latest data, the UAE did not, he said.

Dr Osman said that he also had to use 2009 data to prepare the current gender gap report and after a year of preparations it would now have to be revised.

The 2016 global gender gap report by the World Economic Forum ranks the UAE 124 among 144 countries, which was also believed to be widely out of date.

“The lack of data is sectorial. Education has decent statistics but it’s different with health and labour force statistics for example,” he said.

“It’s a missed opportunity because many of the country’s achievements are not reflected before the international community,”

Rana Khamis, a UNDP project manager, said the agency was keen to “support the government” in any efforts to improve data.

“This was the main challenge in our report because the problem is the data is given on a local level.

“You can’t have data from one [emirate’s] local authority and six missing. In order for us to have concrete findings with proper recommendations and programmes to fill in the gaps, we need accurate data.’

Ahlam Al Lamki, head of research and development at the General Women’s Union, urged the public sector to work together to accurately record the progress being made.

“The study was conducted to highlight and identify the gaps in the different areas of female empowerment,” she said.

“With updated statistics we can develop and launch programmes to support women in the UAE.

“The country has already many achievements in this field and we want to build on these successes for future generations.”