Background
Leaving no one behind (LNOB) is the central, transformative promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals. LNOB means moving beyond assessing average and aggregate progress, towards ensuring progress for all population groups at a disaggregated level.
To support governments and the United Nations system in the Asia-Pacific region, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has developed a user-friendly diagnostic tool called Leave No One Behind (LNOB) platform. The tool is used to improve the understanding of how various circumstances intersect and create inequalities in access to basic opportunities covered by the Sustainable Development Goals. Building on empirical methodologies such as Classification and Regress Trees (CART) and the Dissimilarity index (D-index), it uses data and statistics at national and subnational levels to identify groups left furthest behind and the circumstances they share.
In this technical R training, ESCAP will take participants through the inner workings of its LNOB platform, using the statistical R code that prepares, analyzes and produces evidence on 16 SDG indicators based on the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) from selected Pacific Islands including Kiribati, Fiji, Tuvalu and Tonga. In addition to replicating the results hosted on the LNOB platform, participants will also learn how to operationalize the LNOB methodology on indicators other than those currently available on the platform and to carry out LNOB analysis, using other nationally representative surveys such as Household Income Expenditure Surveys of Marshall Islands or Federated States of Micronesia and Labor Force Survey of Cook Islands, upon availability.