4 October 2021
EGRISS, jointly with the World Bank-UNHCR Joint Data Center on Forced Displacement (JDC), held a lively virtual session on ‘Making the most vulnerable visible: Data gaps and official statistics on forced displacement’ during the UN World Data Forum. The panel included Mr. Sharmarke Farah (Director General of the Somali National Bureau of Statistics), Ms. Olena Shevtsova (Deputy Director of Administrative Directorate, State Statistics Service of Ukraine), Mr. Lucas Gómez (Presidential Envoy for the Colombia Venezuela Border, Government of Colombia), Ms. Haishan Fu (Director of Development Data Group, World Bank), Mr. Björn Gillsäter (Head of the World Bank-UNHCR Joint Data Center on Forced Displacement), and Ms. Natalia Baal (Coordinator of the Expert Group on Refugee and IDP Statistics).
Overall, the session’s objective was to contribute to the debate on how to make forcibly displaced people statistically visible. The session discussed current challenges in collecting, producing, and disseminating quality and comparable statistics on forced displacement, and illustrated local and global initiatives that aim at tackling these obstacles. Particular emphasis was given to the International Recommendations on Refugee and IDP Statistics (IRRS and IRIS), including good practice examples from Somalia and Ukraine on their implementation. Colombia also shared its experience in refugee and migration statistics and emphasized the importance of data to inform evidence-based local policymaking.
Resources from the session: