A/HRC/4/9 page 17 68. The findings of a survey commissioned by the Independent Expert (see A/HRC/4/Add.1), demonstrate that only a handful of countries currently devote particular attention to minorities in their MDG reports. Even in those reports where minorities are mentioned, there is a lack of discussion on how and, crucially, why minorities are experiencing disproportionately high levels of poverty and other serious inequalities. While some countries disaggregate needs by region, few include any disaggregated data by ethnicity. Women belonging to minority groups remain particularly invisible in discussion of most of the MDGs. It is positive that several countries discuss the situation of indigenous peoples; however it is evident that those same countries fail to note that other minority groups within the State face similar or higher levels of exclusion and poverty. While resources and capacity are vital factors, the starting point for improving the impact of poverty reduction on minorities is strong political will. 69. Devising effective poverty reduction strategies requires understanding of the extent and dynamics of poverty in a given context. Monitoring progress also requires some data that forms the baseline from which to assess who is benefiting from poverty reduction and who is not. Monitoring data enables strategies to be changed where they are having a weak or negative impact. Virtually every country collects some kind of census data that can be used in this regard. There is no universal standardized system of data collection since governments will have differing priorities and differing capacities for gathering data. Over time, pressure to publish data disaggregated by sex has had a positive effect, with the result that the Human Development Index now includes some tables disaggregated by sex. 70. A recent project under the auspices of the Statistics Division of the United Nations on ethnocultural data revealed a serious gap in disaggregation of data by ethnicity or religion. In roughly 37 per cent of cases, censuses collected no ethnocultural data. Among 138 national census questionnaires surveyed, only 87 countries or 63 per cent employed some form of ethnic census classification. North America, South America, and Oceania demonstrated the greatest propensity to include ethnicity on their censuses. While Asia’s tendency to enumerate by ethnicity was close to the sample average, both Europe and Africa were much less likely to do so (only 44 per cent of censuses in each region collected ethnocultural data).25 71. The reasons for the absence of data are varied. Governments may have concerns about data protection and privacy of citizens. Asking people to identify their ethnicity, mother tongue or religion may be socially sensitive, particularly where these identities have been used in the past to target individuals or groups for violence or exclusion. In other cases, the capacity to gather accurate data in a highly ethnically or religiously diverse country may be weak or not a budgetary priority. Even when data is collected it may not be published. 72. Data is important for effective poverty reduction and it is therefore surprising that, within aid modalities on poverty, the collection of ethnocultural disaggregated data is not uniformly supported. UNDP has noted that “showing and analysing data on specific ethnic groups may be 25 Ethnicity: A Review of Data Collection and Dissemination (Social and Housing Statistics Section, Demographic and Social Statistics Branch, United Nations Statistics Division, August 2003): p. 4.