On 17 and 18 April 2024, the Meeting of CIS Statistical Officers on Statistics for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) took place, which was organised by the Interstate Statistical Committee of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS Statistical Committee), the United Nations Population Fund for Eastern Europe and Central Asia (UNFPA EECA), together with the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) and the Department of Statistics of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC).

The meeting provided an opportunity for countries to share experiences in data collection and production for monitoring progress towards the SDGs, served as a platform for sharing best practices and lessons learnt from different countries, demonstrated innovative solutions to the challenges facing the global community, and identified priorities for future work and statistical capacity development in this area.

The event was attended by:
- representatives of national statistical offices (NSOs) of the CIS Member-States: Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Armenia, Republic of Belarus, Republic of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Russian Federation, Republic of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Republic of Uzbekistan;
- representatives of international organisations - UNFPA, UNECE, UNICEF, ESCAP, RCC Executive Committee, CIS Statistical Committee, Eurasian Economic Commission and others,
- international experts.

The programme of the meeting consisted of four main sessions:
Session 1. SDGs on the agenda of international organisations.
Session 2. SDG monitoring - an impetus for the development of national statistical systems.
Session 3. Traditional and alternative data sources for SDG monitoring.
Session 4. Dissemination and visualisation of SDG information.

Alexei Borodin, Director General of the Regional Commonwealth in the Field of Communications, made a presentation on "SDGs in the Agenda of the International Telecommunication Union" in Session 1.

Session 1 was devoted to the importance of SDGs for countries and the world community. It highlighted the activities of international organisations in monitoring the SDGs.

In his presentation, A. Borodin noted that "ITU's mission is to advocate, promote and facilitate affordable and universal access to, and use of, telecommunication/information and communication technology networks, services and applications for social, economic and environmentally sustainable growth and development".