Box 19. Developing a Social Inclusion Index: UNDP Nepal It is generally agreed that poverty and human deprivation encompass much more than the purely economic dimensions of human welfare. In order to identify which groups are most in need of government policy and programmatic support, an Inclusion Index is being developed, that combines indicators on poverty (economic exclusion), health and education levels and disparities in political voice to measure the relative status of the different social groups in Nepal. The Index is a work in progress. It looks at economic exclusion (measured by % of a given group falling below the poverty line), human development (measured by school participation rate among 6-14 year old children, % of 20-29 aged population who have graduated from high school, stunting rate among children under 5, underweight rate among children under 5), and political 6.2.4 Identifying Minority Rights Standards: Familiarity with the monitoring and enforcement mechanisms of international minority standards (e.g. the UN Independent Expert on minority issues) and domestic mechanisms (e.g. National Council on Minorities) is also useful for policy and programme support because such mechanisms offer relevant guidance to governments. 6.2.5 Inter-Agency Cooperation: Inter-agency cooperation on minority issues can be established at the national, regional and global levels. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) coordinates the UN Inter-Agency Group on Minorities in Geneva. In Nepal, for example, a Social Inclusion Action 96 exclusion (measured by membership in the civil service, current teachers, local level government officials from the 1999 election). All data is disaggregated by sex and caste/ethnic groups (the small ones have been clustered together). This work is in line with the Government of Nepal’s three-year interim plan, which has made a commitment to further develop a Poverty Monitoring Analysis System and use it to track progress on reducing income poverty, as well as disparities in education, health and political voice between men and women and different social group. In order to do so, it is necessary to develop a standardized manner of clustering the 103 different social groups found in the 2001 Census. Preliminary findings of this work, which has been carried out in collaboration with the National Planning Commission, have ranked the caste/ ethnic groups for each of the three indices. The work continues to develop the composite index for measuring exclusion. DFID and the World Bank are supporting this initiative. Group (SIAG) is a multi-agency forum of donor agencies (including UNDP) and civil society organizations with the purpose of promoting inclusion in policy and practice through advocacy work, learning events, and information sharing. This group helps to bring about changes within participating organizations, and positively influences government and civil society on social inclusion issues. The SIAG is focusing on issues such as workforce diversity and monitoring systems. It is conducting a workforce diversity survey of donor agencies, sharing methodologies for mapping the disadvantaged groups in Nepal and working on developing a social inclusion index. In Ecuador, the UNCT created the Inter-Agency Working Group on Intercultural Issues to coordinate activities impacting principally on marginalised Afro-descendants and Indigenous Peoples (see Box 20). M A R G I N A L I S E D M I N O R I T I E S I N D E V E LO P M E N T P R O G R A M M I N g