In response to widening disparities in the region, ESCAP has identified the need to promote policies that integrate and empower excluded and disadvantaged groups. Thus, it has developed a project to strengthen the capacity of countries to promote social inclusion, gender equality and health promotion in national development plans.

Some of the questions that have guided ESCAP’s work on the Development Account project to ‘strengthen social inclusion, gender equality and health promotion’ in the MDGs included:

» What are processes that lead to exclusion?
» How can we identify them?
» How can we measure them?  

The project has emphasised how these three thematic areas are critical in order to achieve sustainable and inclusive development. In measuring the success of policies to tackle barriers facing disadvantaged groups, the project has highlighted the importance of not only outcome indicators, but also process indicators to capture this process of exclusion and disempowerment. Through its national case studies and dialogue with experts and national policy-makers, the project identified specific barriers and policy gaps to be brought to the attention of policy makers. This dialogue also identified the need to look at these issues in a policy context. As a result, in addition to suggested indicators to help measure and monitor policy interventions, the project also identified policy tools and options to integrate specific issues in national development frameworks. These tools and options are included in a set of policy guidelines that will be shared with policy makers and disseminated online as advocacy and capacity-building material.

The project was a joint efforts between ESCAP as the lead agency and ECA (Africa), ECE (Europe), ECLAC (Latin American and the Caribbean)], and ESCWA (Western Asia) regions. Each Regional Commission pursued the objective to build national capacity to design and implement policies in the thematic areas through substantive analysis, the identification of indicators to monitor and measure policy progress, and the regional exchange of knowledge through online knowledge products.

Overall, the project contributed to highlight the structural barriers to social inclusion, gender equality and health
promotion for disadvantaged and excluded groups and policy measures needed to combat these barriers. In particular, it made contributions in exploring the concept and triggers of social exclusion; identifying policy gaps and options to empower disadvantaged and excluded groups as an integral feature of national development plans; identifying indicators to help combat social exclusion, gender inequality and health inequalities in order to strengthen the monitoring of policies and progress in these three thematic areas; as well as examining how to strengthen gender and economy, the removal of health inequities and promotion of health in later life.