The 2026 United Nations World Data Forum is planned to take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from 9 to 12 November 2026. EGRISS is co-leading three sessions on the programme, including Sustaining the transformation of forced displacement statistics in a changing world. Register here for in-person participation by 1 October 2026.

With more than 120 million people forcibly displaced worldwide and political and economic shifts reshaping the humanitarian-development architecture, this session offers a strategic outlook on the future of statistics on refugees, IDPs, and stateless people, and on how to sustain resilience and impact going forward. It highlights UNHCR’s upcoming Refugee Data Portal — launching in 2026 to integrate population statistics with quality-assured socioeconomic and protection indicators for the first time, building on the UNHCR Microdata Library developed with the World Bank and the JDC, which now hosts more than a thousand datasets. The panel will reflect on the collective investment behind this progress — with 67 countries reporting implementation of the international recommendations through EGRISS’s GAIN Survey over the past five years — and on what comes next: pooling technical assistance, strengthening donor coordination, and using common statistical frameworks and tools to maintain momentum. Speakers include representatives from Djibouti’s INSTAD, the Kurdistan Region Statistics Office, the World Bank-UNHCR JDC, UNHCR, Statistics Norway, the UK FCDO, and EGRISS.