 Hello everybody I want to start by thanking the organizers of this disability data festival for inviting me to have a small reflection with you on why is that it is important to discuss about this aggregation why is that we need to have data disaggregated by disability. To start with of course and I know I'm preaching to a converted we need to have data to inform policy we need data so that we can design and develop better policies to address the needs of persons with disabilities and the second place we need data to measure progress because if we do design a policy we also need to know how this policy is working and the population that we or that this policy is aimed to protect and the third reason why is that of course after we develop the policy after we measure the progress we also need this to inform the policy change after the process of measurement we also need to know where to go with the policy and where do we need to look for change so and why is that we need that now and I think this is the question of urgency why is that we are talking so much about urgency as we all know we are having these discussions in the framework of the recent adoption of the sustainable development goals that for the first time included concrete references to persons with disabilities these references together with the indicators that were developed are now the basic framework that we have to push for changes in the ground to push for new policies that will directly improve hopefully the lives of persons with disabilities and thus in this case time is of essence since the adoption of the SDGs we had already seen three years passing by and in many cases and many states unfortunately we still don't have a basic baseline that will help us to develop this policy to measure the policy and of course to change the policy to make it better so how or what do we need now and I think that the challenges we have ahead of us is exactly how to build the capacity of countries that don't have the capacity to collect this data how to support the states in their efforts to collect this data and how to work together towards that aim and I think that for that of course you will be discussing this but we have a very cost effective and simple tool with the Washington group set of questions we believe that this is the tool that at this point is ready to be used to start the process of disaggregation of data by disability but we still have as I was mentioning many challenges ahead challenges that refer to the lack of capacity of many states to implement these questions we still need to think about how to translate the questions better we still need to think about how to adapt it to the cultural environment in each country and for that is that we need joint action in a strong action to move forward so how do we do that well we need the UN system to work together we need civil society to join the groups we need of course the national statistical offices to get engaged in these discussions and to increase their capacity with regards to how to collect data of persons with disabilities and how to disaggregate data in a cost effective manner I think that as I said before with the SDGs we have a great opportunity to develop the policies that we need to change the lives of persons with disabilities and I hope that this kind of discussion that this festival is going to help us to move forward in that regard and I thank you very much for the opportunity I wish you a very successful discussions thank you very much