My Ghana Electronic Desk

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE More than 5,000 experts and advocates of women’s health and reproductive rights issues, have confirmed their participation in the third in a series of global conferences on women scheduled for May 28, 2013 to May 30, 2013 in Kualar Lumpur, Malaysia. Dubbed Women Deliver 2013, the conference will be addressed by speakers of great repute such as Melinda Gates,   Co-chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ; Michelle Bachelet,   Under-Secretary-General & Executive Director of United Nations Women and Helen Clark,   Administrator, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) . Others  are Michel Sidibé,   Executive Director, Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) ; Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA); Her Royal Highness, Crown Princess Mette-Marit   of Norway and Dr. Hans Rosling,   Professor of International Health, Karolinska Institute; Co-founder & Chairman, Gapminder F

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE Dr, Carlos Lopes Dr. Carlos Lopes, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), has passionately appealed for due attention to be focused on the use of viable available data for any development agenda, after the Millennium Development Goals period in 2015. Making the plea to the UN-mandated High Level Panel of Eminent Personalities on the post-2015 Development Agenda, Lopes tasked them to ensure that any development framework that eventually replaces the current Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) “pays due attention to the availability and use of viable data.” Addressing a session of the Panel in Monrovia last weekend, the UN Under-Secretary General made a personal but insightful analysis of why some of the MDG targets could not be fully attained by African countries, suggesting that the absence of up-to-date data for clear measuring mechanisms might even have obscured achievements in some countries.