DEVELOPING NATIONAL SYSTEMS OF SOCIAL PROTECTION STATISTICS IN ESWATINI

Monitoring and evaluation systems are key components of national strategies for developing social protection systems. They enable informed and evidence-based decision-making by those responsible for designing and implementing social protection policies and programmes. In addition, they feed the public debate on social protection and can reinforce the political will to scale up and enhance the effectiveness of social protection systems. The International Training Centre of the ILO (ITC-ILO), as the training arm of the Organization, is dedicated to supporting the pursuit of critical areas for national capacity building, including those related to social protection statistics. The Centre offers learning, knowledge-sharing, and institutional capacity-building programmes contributing to the fulfilment of the ILO’s strategic objectives, respect of international social protection standards and the UN's 2030 Agenda with specific emphasis on target 1.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This training course provided an opportunity to further strengthen the national systems of social protection statistics in Eswatini, which are essential elements to refining and realizing more efficient strategies to extend social protection coverage as well as to the monitoring of national progress towards the achievement of social protection goals, including target 1.3 of the SDGs. OBJECTIVES Through this training participants were be able to : - Enhance knowledge of social protection concepts and principles contributing to the design of a national statistical system; - Become familiar with methods and definitions of social protection statistics, including ILO methodology for collection and monitoring social protection data; - Improve capacity to collect, process and analyse social protection data in a coherent and systemic way, producing minimum and extended sets of social protection indicators; - Become equipped with the knowledge of the social protection data cycle and step-by-step implementation plan for building and strengthening the national strategy; - Enhance capacity of disseminating and communicating statistical data for evidence-based decision-making, design and implementation of social protection policies and programmes; - Become familiar and put into practice the key stages of building national systems of social protection statistics in Eswatini. CONTENT - International legal framework for social protection statistics: ILO principles and definitions; - Relevance of establishing a national system of social protection statistics (NSSPS). Phases, stakeholders and guiding principles; - Importance of building national system of social protection statistics: regional and national perspectives; - Challenges and opportunities for social protection data collection and analysis in Eswatini; - Social protection data cycle: Data entry, processing and production of data and statistics. ILO tools for global comparable social protection statistics; - Mapping the landscape for NSSPS in Eswatini; - Relevance of the minimum parameters for national systems of social protection statistics. Social protection indicators; - How to guarantee reliable and quality data? - Collecting and monitoring social protection data. Understanding coverage dimensions: Trends and indicators, and monitoring progress towards the Africa Regional Strategy for coverage acceleration; - Social protection indicators – building national M&E frameworks using different sources of data; - Disaggregation of social protection data and indicators: age, gender, migrant and refugee status and other disaggregations; - Data visualisation and dissemination; - Effective communication of knowledge products: channels and tools; - Building national systems of social protection statistics: from theory to action. NUMBER OF HOURS: The workshop on developing national systems of social protection statistics in Eswatini took place over a period of four days (40h).