A/HRC/42/38 108. States should train authorities at all levels to conduct and respond to evaluations. States should make government officials aware of the fact that evaluations of development policies and programmes, including sectoral policies, will be carried out. 109. Governments should give consulted communities information on the outcomes of assessments and field research carried out to monitor and evaluate development programmes. 110. National councils for social and economic development (or equivalent institutions) should develop multi-stakeholder forums that facilitate the development of a national agenda for development that is fair and equitable. A national observatory of equality could be attached to these institutions to monitor implementation. In addition, provincial councils should be established to carry out similar work at the local level. 111. States should collect disaggregated data. Data disaggregation efforts need to draw on a human rights-based approach to data.12 The aim of such an approach is to evaluate not only the outcomes of policies but also the structures and processes that lead to those outcomes. Specifically: (a) In a human rights-based approach to data, the process of data collection should actively involve the community about whom the information is being gathered; (b) Respondents should be able to self-select how they identify in terms of ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability status; (c) Data privacy should be maintained and balanced against the need for transparency; (d) Data should be disaggregated to enable an assessment of how policies and programmes are affecting individuals and groups that have faced discrimination. 112. National statistical offices and national human rights institutions should collaborate to facilitate the operationalization of a human rights-based approach to data. 113. States should enhance the international cooperation provided for capacity-building activities aimed at improving data collection in developed and developing countries. 114. Civil society’s capacity to gather disaggregated data should be enhanced and innovative approaches should be developed to bridge gaps in data collection. In that regard, civil society should work closely with national statistical institutes. 115. States should guarantee the existence of a civic space conducive to the gathering of reliable data, especially for assessing the true perceptions of communities. 116. States should ensure that women are equally represented in decision-making related to monitoring and evaluation, both at national and local levels. A gender-sensitive approach should be systematically integrated into evaluation processes. 117. States should empower targeted recipients of social programmes, including the poor, to conduct social audits of public sector departments and ministries responsible for delivering such programmes. 118. In their monitoring and evaluation policies, States should take into account groups that have been discriminated against or historically excluded, including women, ethnic and religious minorities or supressed majorities, indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, internally displaced persons, refugees and asylum seekers, deep rural communities, forest communities, nomadic communities, youth, those who may be unaccounted for including stateless peoples, people deprived of liberty and others. Specifically: (a) Governments should undertake a mapping exercise, through the collection of disaggregated data, of those who are excluded along prohibited grounds of discrimination, while taking into consideration issues of intersectionality; 12 14 OHCHR, “A human rights-based approach to data: leaving no one behind in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” (Geneva, 2018).