Today, the People’s Advocate Office signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the Council for Preventing and Eliminating of Discrimination and Ensuring Equality (CPEDEE).

The present Memorandum of Understanding is a tool for formalization of collaborative relations between national human rights institutions (NHRI), such as the People’s Advocate Office of Moldova, the Council for Preventing and Eliminating of Discrimination and Ensuring Equality and the National Bureau of Statistics. The Memorandum of Understanding aims to contribute to the exchange of knowledge and experience between the parties, as well as to the collaboration on the collection, dissemination and analysis of human rights data.

In order for the work of the National Bureau of Statistics to be in line with the principle of the 2030 Global Agenda “to leave no one behind” and the work of national human rights institutions to rely more on evidence and data, in general, the areas of collaboration between the signatory entities are the following:

• joint participation in training and working groups to exchange knowledge and information on vulnerable or underrepresented groups that are likely to be left behind in the implementation of the Global Agenda by 2030 and the reflection of these groups in statistical data and NHRI’s reports;
• collaboration in the collection, interpretation and analysis of data on the main population groups, in accordance with human rights priorities.

The Parties will also cooperate in the publication and dissemination of data, by communicating them in a friendly manner for access and use by the groups of the population that provided them (“return of information”). These collaborative relations will be valuable in the context of the state’s activity in implementing the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development and measuring the progress achieved, as well as the role of NHRI in achieving the Agenda according to the Merida Declaration, adopted at country level.

The UN Office for Human Rights Moldova has facilitated the signing of this Memorandum and will support a program of actions of strengthening these three institutions on the implementation of the human rights-based approach in data collection, disaggregation, dissemination and analysis.

Present at the event, Bea Ferenci, Human Rights Adviser and Head of OHCHR Moldova, mentioned that “The Memorandum of Understanding between the three institutions is an important step towards a better application of the human rights approach to collection, disaggregation, dissemination and data analysis. A closer involvement of all three institutions will ensure that their expertise contributes to the advancement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, as well as to the implementation of the “leave no one behind” principle.