Democracy is strengthened with the representation of people from all communities. When a government makes policies though, they are based on datasets that don’t adequately represent all communities and their diverse needs. In a world that’s moving increasingly towards evidence-based policy decisions, it is important that all communities are represented in data, but it is not feasible for governments to collect the level of disaggregated data that ensure sufficient representation of diverse communities and sub-communities.

With this realization, civil society groups in India, Nepal, and other several countries in collaboration with the International Civil Society Center, Germany, have been pushing the case for Community-Driven Data (CDD). CDD allows us to collect micro-level data of vulnerable communities and help visualize their challenges, especially in comparison with national-level statistics.

With this side event anchor organizations from the four countries want to come together to share and learn from each other’s approaches and also reach out to the larger civil society in the region to hear their thoughts and feedback on the initiatives.