A/HRC/4/9 page 19 77. Indicators must be relevant to the communities surveyed and the collection of data should be undertaken with direct involvement of minorities. UNDP Regional Bureau for Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States is training Roma to act as survey managers to gather information to be used in poverty reduction strategies. This may make some community members more comfortable in sharing their concerns and self-identifying as minorities. 78. Collection of disaggregated data has long been established in the Compilation of guidelines on the form and content of reports to be submitted by States parties to the international human rights treaties (HRI/GEN/2/Rev.2). The treaty bodies request information about the “main ethnic and demographic characteristics of the country and its population” along with information on religion and mother tongue languages (ibid., para. 1). More specifically, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination stresses the importance of ethnic data in monitoring progress on eliminating discrimination in its own reporting guidelines. 79. An important initiative under the auspices of OHCHR has been summarized in the report of the High Commissioner containing a draft basic document on the development of a racial equality index. The Index would provide a country-specific view of inequalities along key human development indicators based on ethnicity, information that is currently absent from, for example, UNDP annual Human Development Report and Human Development Index (see E/CN.4/2006/14).29 80. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is helping to raise the profile of the need for more ethnocultural data. The Bank’s project for monitoring the equity and social indicators for MDGs - Eqxis - includes information on the situation of indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants.30 The data collected reveals wide gaps in available data for many countries. To fill this gap the Bank is funding national statistics strengthening programmes, for example, in Nicaragua. This effort has emerged from regional level dialogues on how to improve data collection on ethnicity. The last round of censuses in the region demonstrated increases in the collection of ethnocultural data. 81. In Europe, where exclusion of immigrants is a major problem, a European Inclusion Index has been developed to measure EU policy in five key areas relevant to Third Country Nationals: labour market inclusion, long-term residence, family reunion, nationality and anti-discrimination. In 2005 the findings showed that the then 15-EU member States had practices that were, on average, “less than favourable” to immigrant inclusion across all five areas. The second edition will be published in 2007 including all 27 EU member States plus Canada, Switzerland and Norway. Future editions will also be able to track countries’ progress over time.31 29 The experts agreed that a global ranked index like the human development index would not be feasible. 30 31 See http://www.iadb.org/xindicators/. Laura Citron, “How to measure integration: the European Inclusion Index”, in Equal Voices, Issue 19, (Oct. 2006): pp. 11-16.