Lies, damned lies and statistics : by Ken Gibbs

BATHING THE BABY
Every time I hear this ‘statement’, I always wonder who coined it first.
Checking Google or one of the more recent AI-bots, it seems that there is no definitive answer – because they don’t have enough data to make their answer statistically significant ? Actually, the consensus appears to be that Mark Twain said that it was Disraeli whose writing does not confirm it. So, we are left wondering. Perhaps Mark Twain wanted to put those words into Huckleberry Finn’s mouth, but felt that he wouldn’t have used those particular words ?

Casting our collective minds back to the Situation Analysis’s preparation, so much of the ‘State of Xxxxxx’s children’ documents were based on ‘statistics’ that we should all be fully familiar with their typical contents.

The timing of my departure from UNICEF on early retirement in 1996 coincided with the preparation of the Country Office’s ‘State of the Xxxxx Children’, so I was fully familiar with the supposed process. I even wrote about it some two years ago: Click here

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So, you might ask yourself, why am I bringing up the subject yet again ? Well, there are some aspects of statistics which have remained with me and which are worthy of mention again.

There are two in particular: In the late 1980s, I had the good fortune to be summonsed to attend a Country Programme Planning exercise in Islamabad because I happened to be one of the RPOs (Resident Programme Officers) in Pakistan. Also attending this meeting was Dr Claudio Sepulveda, a charming doctor who was originally from Chile but made stateless by his opposition to General Pinochet. His obituary paints a fascinating character here:

During this meeting, Dr Sepulveda had his head buried deep in the Census Data which - from memory - was called The Village Gazetteer, for the appropriate period. He seemed not to notice what was going on around him until such time as there was an invitation for comments from the floor. Dr Sepulveda bided his time but finally asked if he might make an observation ? He said that nowhere in UNICEF’s preliminary articles which would form the basis for programme selection was mention made about the high maternal mortality rate for first time mothers. Silence followed, and some confusion, yet here we had Dr Sepulveda being able to see clearly exactly which age group it affected, and he was surmising that they had to be first-time mothers. Any younger and they wouldn’t have reached puberty. Would UNICEF be able to address this problem, he wondered, as it might be a challenge to the local social fabric ?

If someone had put a cat amongst the pigeons, Dr Sepulveda’s quiet comments did much the same for UNICEF, Pakistan.

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Thinking of the Government official census data, even I found something which I didn’t understand in the Village Gazetteer for Baluchistan. I wrote one article looking at just one aspect of the data which can be read here.

Small wonder I ended that article by saying that there are some things I wish I didn’t know.

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Not being fully familiar with UNICEF Version 2026, I am wondering how the agency handles present day country statistics ? Are they collected by independent groups, and if so, how reliable are they ? Who pays those groups, and does UNICEF have any oversight responsibilities ? If the statistics come straight out of Government, how reliable are they, given that very substantial sums of money are being given to Middle and Lower Income countries for them to improve the situation of women and children, based on those statistics ?

A further question I ask myself is that if UNICEF is reducing its front-line presence in recipient countries, what role does the Audit Section have in ensuring that the money that is handed over is actually going to where it is likely to have a beneficial effect on children ?

Decisions, decisions ! Where should the staff reductions have taken place ? Going on some of the discussions, it would seem that there are differing views on whether the re-structuring is likely to be effective or, to put it another way, is the baby not being thrown out with the bath water ?
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