A/72/219 presidents of all councils of national minorities within the country, in the implementation of Serbia’s 2016 action plan for exercising the rights of national minorities. 9 B. Data collection 13. The role of disaggregated data in the implementation and monitoring of rights of persons belonging to minorities has been repeatedly stressed by the Special Rapporteur on minority issues, human rights treaty bodies and other human rights actors. In the same vein, in November 2016, the Forum on Minority Issues recommended at its ninth session, which focused on minorities in situations of humanitarian crises, that relevant data should be collected and responsibly managed according to international standards and disaggregated, where possible, by ethnicity, language, nationality status, religious affiliation, age and gender. 14. The importance of data collection is also evident in connection with the Sustainable Development Goals, not least in ensuring that the implementation of the commitment to leave no one behind is pursued and tracked. According to the agreed global framework, the Goals’ indicators should be disaggregated, where relevant, by income, sex, age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability and geographic location, or other characteristics, in accordance with the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics. 15. United Nations field presences have advocated for the collection of disaggregated data in a number of country contexts. For example, the OHCHR Regional Office for South America has pursued initiatives emphasizing the need to collect disaggregated data to understand how discrimination is fel t by different groups and thus to design targeted policies. 10 UN-Women has also encouraged the collection and use of such data, including by reviewing the availability of sex disaggregated data in order to point out data gaps with respect to ethnic minority women and girls in Viet Nam. 11 In Kenya, OHCHR kick-started the cooperation between the National Commission on Human Rights and the Bureau of Statistics that was instrumental to an agreement on a list of the population groups that should not be left behind, which would inform national efforts to implement and measure progress on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. 12 16. Several States reported on their efforts in the area of data collection. Slovakia, for example, referred to its national action plan for its population and housing census in 2021, with an emphasis on Roma and marginalized groups. 13 Argentina reported that, in 2016, the National Institute against Racism, Xenophobia and Discrimination started to update the national mapping study on disc rimination in the country, 14 aimed at providing statistical data on the situation of persons who are victims of discrimination. The National Human Rights Commission of Mexico had prepared a study on the situation of people of African descent, so as to raise awareness and to build analytical benchmarks. 15 __________________ 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 17-12826 Submission by Serbia. See, for example, information on a workshop devoted to this topic, available, in Spanish, from http://acnudh.org/31688-2/. Submission by UN-Women. Submission by the OHCHR Human Rights Adviser in Kenya. Submission by Slovakia. Submission by Argentina. Submission by the National Human Rights Commission of Mexico. 5/12