Technical notes on the progress assessment

Data

The progress assessment is based on the Global indicator framework for the Sustainable Development Goals20. The data were downloaded from the United Nations Global SDG Indicators Database on 24 December 2025. For some indicators, the report relies on the UNECE Statistical Database. This is the case where the UNECE Database, through its existing data collection, has a more comprehensive coverage of countries or data on more recent years for UNECE countries, or where the UNECE Database provides more precise or consistent measurements for the UNECE region. This concerns indicators 3.6.1 on road traffic deaths and 9.1.2 on passenger and freight volumes. Indicator 3.7.1 on family planning is sourced from the United Nations Population Division, indicator 8.1.1 on annual growth rate of the gross domestic product per capita from the World Bank, and indicator 8.5.1, unemployment rate, from the International Labour Organization.

20 United Nations (2025). Global indicator framework for the Sustainable Development Goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. A/RES/71/313, E/CN.3/2018/2, E/CN.3/2019/2, E/CN.3/2020/2, E/CN.3/2021/2, E/CN.3/2022/2,
E/CN.3/2023/2, E/CN.3/2024/4, E/CN.3/2025/6.

Assessment measure

The assessment uses the Anticipated Progress Index, a method developed by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP)21 and applied by all five United Nations regional commissions.

21 United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (2025). Annex 1: Technical notes – methodology to measure progress. Pp. 55–59 in Asia and the Pacific SDG progress report: engaging communities to close the evidence gap, 2025. Bangkok: United Nations.

The Anticipated Progress Index measures whether a target will be achieved by 2030 based on the rate of change observed between 2000 and 2025. Recent data are given more weight than earlier data in estimating anticipated indicator values for 2030. For targets that will not be achieved, the index reports the gap between the desired target value and the anticipated value for 2030, relative to the progress required between 2015 and 2030.

Estimation and aggregation

The anticipated values for 2030 are estimated using the available data between 2000 and 2025. The time-weighted linear regression used for the estimation gives more importance to more recent data. The assessment uses all available indicators where at least two data points are available for at least 15 UNECE countries and for which it is possible to set a target value (see Target values). In total, the assessment uses 176 indicators across 127 targets and all 17 goals (see Indicators used in the assessment). For 67 indicators, sufficient country data are not available to assess progress for the region. Seventeen indicators are excluded because they are not measured for the UNECE countries (for example, indicators pertaining to least developed countries only) or because it is not possible to determine a desirable direction of development (for example, the indicator on the extent of water-related ecosystems).

The approach is the same in the assessment of the 17 programme countries, which uses all indicators where at least two data points are available for at least 5 countries: 157 indicators across 115 targets and all 17 goals.

Some indicators consist of several components. For example, indicator 1.3.1 (Proportion of population covered by social protection) consists of 11 social protection benefits, and indicator 3.c.1 (Health worker density by occupation) consists of separate measures for nurses, doctors, pharmacists and physicians. In such cases, all components with data are used in the calculations, and the progress index for the indicator is the average of the indices of its components. Altogether, 448 data series were used.

The estimation described above is carried out on the country level. For the regional level assessment, the median value is used for most indicators. For a subset of indicators, the mean provides a better summary of the distribution of values across the region.22 For indicators with binary values, which show the existence of a certain policy in a country, the summary value for the region is the percentage of countries with such a policy.

22 The regional value represents the mean value for indicators 2.5.1, 3.6.1, 4.1.1, 10.7.2, 12.4.1, 15.2.1, and 16.1.1.

In this report, the assessment results are presented at the level of SDG targets. In aggregation to the target level, each indicator has an equal weight (independent of its number of components) under the corresponding target.

Target values

The methodology uses desired target values for each indicator (or its component), which are expected to be reached by 2030. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development explicitly or implicitly defines target values for 87 indicators included in this progress assessment. For the other indicators, the “champion area” approach is used to define the region’s target value. Three variants of this approach are applied.

The most common variant identifies top performers in the region according to the rate of change. Top performers are defined as the five countries with the highest compound annual growth rate between the earliest observation available between 2000 and 2015. When the earliest empirical observation is 2015 or later, the growth rate is the compound annual growth rate between this value and the next available value. The target value is set as the product of the mean growth rate of the top performers and the regional median value in 2015.

For some indicators, the very rapid progress cannot reasonably be applied to the future. For these, top performers are identified as the five countries with either the highest or lowest values in 2015 depending on whether the desirable direction of change is an increase or a decrease. The target value is then set as the mean value in 2015 among these top performers.

For a small group of indicators, it is not obvious whether rapid change or low or high absolute levels are desired (for example, 9.2.2, Manufacturing employment as a percentage of total employment). For such indicators, top performers are taken to be the countries with the highest gross domestic product per capita in 2015 and the target value as the average value for 2015 of these top performers.

To set a reasonable target value for certain indicators, it is necessary to transform the data disseminated in the Global SDG Indicator Database into a different unit of measurement. For example, data for indicator 17.17.1 on funds committed to public-private partnerships are reported in total United States dollars. The size of national economies varies across the UNECE region, and it would not be appropriate to set a dollar-value target according to the largest or best performing economies. In these cases, data values are normalized based on gross domestic product for the corresponding year so that the data reflect per cent of gross domestic product. It is then possible to apply a universally appropriate target value based on per cent of gross domestic product. Data for indicators 8.a.1, 10.b.1, 15.a.1, 15.b.1, 17.7.1, 17.17.1, and 17.9.1 have been transformed in this way.

For a few indicators, a desirable direction of change and a target value cannot be determined. This is typically the case with indicators that are meant to provide a dashboard for a qualitative overall assessment of the situation (for example, indicator 6.6.1 on changes to water-related ecosystems over time). Such indicators were left out of the assessment.

Outliers are dropped from the target-value estimation using the interquartile range method.

For the programme countries, the set of desired target values is the same as those for the entire UNECE region, with the exception of cases where the target value is obtained using the rate of change. For those indicators, the desired target value for the programme countries is the product of the rate of change of top performers in the UNECE region and the median value observed in the programme countries in 2015.

Presentation

In the charts, each target is coloured according to the gap between anticipated and desired progress. The colour is green if the pace of progress is sufficient to reach the target value by 2030; light yellow if the pace of progress is at least at two thirds of the rate needed to reach the target; dark yellow if the pace of progress is slower than two thirds of the necessary rate; and red if the trend observed so far runs counter to the desired direction. If the target cannot be assessed, it is shown in grey.

The description of the assessment results for the programme countries focuses on the features that are different from the results for the entire region and where the difference is not attributable to data availability. While using the same methodology, the direct comparison between the assessments is not always straightforward because under some SDG targets, the set of indicators and data series available for the programme countries is not identical to that available for the entire region.