Expert Group Meeting on Citizen Data sets high ambitions for more inclusive data practices
From the 17th to the 19th of July the Collaborative on Citizen Data gathered National Human Rights Institutions, civil society organisations, National Statistical Offices, international organisations, experts and communities for the workshop and Third Expert Group Meeting on Citizen Data in New York City.
The meeting was hosted by the United Nations Statistics Division and UN Women, and co-organized with the Collaborative on Citizen Data, which the Danish Institute for Human Rights is a part of. It gathered the different stakeholders at the sideline of the UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development and focused on advancing citizen data.
Citizen data is understood as data that rightsholders, communities or organisations representing them produce to monitor, demand, or drive change on issues that affect them. It can also be data which is generated by state actors with meaningful engagement of concerned stakeholders. These kinds of data can help monitor the implementation of rights and help shed light on inequalities in how different groups experience access to services. Citizen data is essential for filling critical data gaps on often underrepresented groups, such as migrants, persons with disabilities, and indigenous populations.
In different ways citizen data can help making marginalised groups, whose perspectives have been lacking in statistics and data generated by governments and National Statistics Offices, more visible. Therefore, the Danish Institute for Human Rights together with different partners has been working with citizen data in Denmark and supporting rightsholder groups such as Indigenous Peoples and human rights defenders abroad to collect data on their situation.
Through the Collaborative on Citizen Data, the Danish Institute for Human Rights is working to get better generation and more use of citizen data to complement official statistics. By enhancing citizen participation in government decision-making, we aim to further values of fairness, inclusiveness, openness, and transparency in statistics.
The Copenhagen Framework on Citizen Data
During the two days of the meeting in New York, the Expert Group set high ambitions for more inclusive practices in the data ecosystem. That is, by valuing, supporting and using data generated by rightsholders, civil society organisations, academia and National Human Rights Institutions, and by meaningfully including these actors across the data value chain in the generation of official statistics.
Participants in these events also exchanged experiences and held discussions on the quality standards for citizen data and on how to leverage citizen data for public policy and programmatic actions.
The Expert Group gathered insights for the ongoing revision of the Copenhagen Framework on Citizen Data which was drafted last September at the Second Expert Group Meeting, hosted by the Danish Institute for Human Rights. The Framework will continue to evolve from the conversations during the meeting and from the ongoing global consultations and national dialogues, before it is presented to the UN Statistical Commission in February 2025.
The Danish Institute for Human Rights has been working with citizens data in an international context through, for example:
- The right to defend rights monitoring tool that systematically monitor progress on the enabling environment for human rights defenders in accordance with human rights norms and standards;
- The Indigenous Navigator that provides a framework and a set of tools for Indigenous Peoples to collect data and monitor their human rights and ensure they are not left behind.
And in a Danish context in form of:
- LGBT+ barometer that measures living conditions and equal treatment for LGBT+ in Denmark;
- The Handicap Barometer that shows current status on equal rights and living conditions for people with disabilities in Denmark.