3rd-8th March 2025
The 56th session of the UN Statistical Commission (UNSC) took place in New York in turbulent times for the UN and wider development sector. Whilst EGRISS was not formerly included in the agenda (we will report next year to the 57th session) there were a number of items that included concrete contributions from the Expert Group, demonstrating the success of the out efforts to work in synergy with the wider statistical system. Moreover, in the sidelines of the UNSC, EGRISS took the opportunity to host an in-person meeting of its Annual High-Level Steering Committee.
In 2024, EGRISS Secretariat and several members advanced efforts to mainstream the International Recommendations on Refugee, IDP, and Statelessness Statistics into broader statistical guidance. This included the revised Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses to support the 2030 round (now including content from IRRS, IROSS, IRIS and the Compilers’ Manual) and the Recommendations on Statistics of International Migration and Temporary Mobility (now better aligned to the IRRS and IROSS, highlighting the linkages between migration and displacement statistics). Both of these publications were discussed and endorsed by Member States at the 56th session (agenda items b and g respectively), and EGRISS’ Secretariat was invited to take part in a side event on the latter in the lead up to the Commission. Moreover, results from the 2024 GAIN Survey reveal a significant number of national censuses that have used EGRISS Recommendations to inform the inclusion of refugees, IDPs or stateless populations.
Beyond these topics, several other agenda items had clear connections to EGRISS work and were able to demonstrate these concretely. Regarding the SDG indicators (agenda item e), through a recent methodological paper, EGRISS was able to support national efforts to improve the inclusion of refugees, IDPs and stateless populations in key priority indicators. Concerning household surveys (agenda item p), EGRISS members have been contributing to the Inter-Secretariat Working Group on Household Surveys (ISWGHS) work to revise the UN Handbooks on Household Surveys. Finally, concerning regional statistical development (agenda item s), UNECLAC reported on progress including efforts of the CEPAL working group, where 14 countries under the leadership of INE Honduras and with support from SICA, UNHCR, IOM and JIPS, are committed to improve the production of harmonized statistics on forced displacement and migration in Latin America.
High-Level Steering Committee
All of these items and many more were highlighted in EGRISS’ annual High Level Steering Committee meeting that took place in the side lines of the 56th session, co-hosted by UNDP and IOM. With presentations from Statistics Norway, the Kurdistan Region Statistics Office, Colombia’s Department of National Statistics, UNHCR and the WB-UNHCR Joint Data Center on Forced Displacement, the meeting was well attended and generated clear strategic guidance for the Group’s work moving forward.
Taken together with other milestones described above, the 56th session of the UNSC demonstrated the significant progress that EGRISS has managed to achieve in recent years. One clear example of this comes from the side event organised by Statistics Poland where a new dashboard of refugee health data was launched, resulting from a collaboration between Statistics Poland and the World Health Organization (WHO). A mere decade ago, we were highlighting the need for comprehensive statistical recommendations on refugees and advocating for displacement data to be better connected to national statistical systems – now EGRISS has become a flourishing community of champions for this agenda and NSOs are increasingly taking on leadership roles in this space. In the words of Marek Cierpiał-Wolan, the Director General of Statistics Poland: “Our work has been inspired by the EGRISS group; our success is also your success”.