The new global scenario in times of COVID-19 makes it necessary to take urgent measures and assess the impacts they will have. ECLAC has built this Observatory to support review and follow-up over the medium and long terms and at the request of CELAC. The Observatory tracks the public policies that the 33 countries of the Latin America and Caribbean region are implementing to limit the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and offers analyses of the economic and social impacts that these policies will have at the national and sectoral levels.
At the tenth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Quito (2007), the member States of ECLAC requested the creation of a gender equality observatory. The Division for Gender Affairs of ECLAC serves as technical secretariat of the Gender Equality Observatory, coordinating the efforts both of other United Nations agencies and cooperation organizations involved, and of national machineries for the advancement of women and national statistical institutes of the countries of the region.
This Observatory is as an initiative of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) to foster increased knowledge, dissemination and implementation of rights of access to information, public participation and access to justice in environmental matters, as enshrined in Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development.
The Regional Observatory on Planning for Development is a dynamic space of analysis, information and collective production of knowledge for governments, academy, private sector and civil society regarding planning for development in Latin America and the Caribbean.
At the second session of the Regional Conference on Social Development in Latin America and the Caribbean (Uruguay, 2017),the member States of ECLAC requested the Commission to set up an “Observatory on social development to support public policymaking and assist in monitoring trends”. The Observatory on Social Development in Latin America and the Caribbean integrates a number of digital platforms developed by ECLAC, including portals and databases on social investment, non-contributory social protection programmes in Latin America and the Caribbean, youth and social inclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean, social institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean, and regional and subregional commitments on social development. The Observatory also offers brief country profiles and analytical documents relating to these databases.
The Urban and Cities Platform of Latin America and the Caribbean responds to the great need to collect and analyze information related to urban areas of the region. The Platform provides its users with an objective tool to monitor the implementation of the urban dimension of the 2030 Agenda, the New Urban Agenda and the Regional Action Plan for the implementation of the New Urban Agenda. It also provides a space to facilitate the exchange of experiences and ideas in order to strengthen regional, national and subnational capacities for sustainable urban development and promote South-South cooperation as a horizontal learning mechanism in the region.
The objective of the Observatory is to deepen the knowledge about the economic relations between both regions, and to have a permanent mechanism that provides the different actors of both regions with the necessary information that contributes to the adoption of policies and strategies of the issue.
The Regional Broadband Observatory was created in response to a request by the Regional Broadband Dialogue, comprised of 10 countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, the Plurinational State of Bolivia and Uruguay. It aims to provide a relevant and timely source of information that will help the region’s countries devise and follow up public policies for the universal provision of broadband.
The Fiscal Observatory of Latin America and the Caribbean (OFILAC) was born as an initiative of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), with financial support from the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development (AECID), to contribute to the improvement of fiscal policy through the dissemination of studies and debate with different actors, joining forces of different organisms participating in this observatory, such as GIZ, AECID, European Commission, IMF, IADB, OECD, CIAT, among others. OFILAC represents a place for the analysis, discussion and follow-up of fiscal policy in the countries of the region, encouraging the debate of fiscal subjects among employees from international organizations, fiscal authorities and other experts in the subject.
Established at the first session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean and constitutes the roadmap for the integration of population dynamics and sustainable development with equality and a rights-based approach: key to the Program of Action of Cairo after 2014.
Recognizing the transformative impact of digitalization and its close relationship with productive, inclusive, and sustainable development, the Digital Development Observatory (DDO) is launched. This initiative, led by ECLAC and funded by the European Union, aims to monitor the digital transformation process in Latin American and Caribbean countries, in order to support the formulation of digital policies that help reduce structural gaps in productivity and social inclusion. To achieve this, the DDO generates comparable indicators across countries in key areas such as digital connectivity and infrastructure, artificial intelligence, the adoption and use of digital technologies and applications, as well as the development of the digital ecosystem.