Methodological Refinement

The EGRISS Compiler's Manual is a critical resource for improving statistics on refugees and IDPs. As a living document, it is regularly updated to reflect the latest advancements in the field. Following the endorsement of the International Recommendations on Statelessness Statistics (IROSS) in 2023, EGRISS is currently working to expand its coverage to include statelessness.

This process ensures the Manual remains comprehensive and relevant for national statistical offices and other institutions, furthering EGRISS' commitment to providing the tools and resources necessary for compiling accurate and comprehensive displacement statistics. The technical revision is being conducted through TSG2 and, following an EGRISS-wide consultation, the updated Manual will be presented to the UN Statistical Commission.

Clarifying, standardising, and streamlining questions used to identify refugees and IDPs is essential to ensure their visibility in data produced through national surveys and to fill important guidance gaps and ensure more reliable data. In 2023, TSG2 published a methodological paper that proposed a standardised approach and introduced specific questions and metadata designed to identify different statistical categories from the IRIS and IRRS frameworks. Since then, EGRISS members actively involved in survey implementation have been collecting lessons learnt from the practical application of these and other questions incorporated into both forced displacement-specific surveys and wider national surveys.

In 2025, this workstream was revitalised under the leadership of the EGRISS Secretariat and UNHCR. Having received a grant from UNHCR Data Innovation Fund, the project EGRISS IDQ: Leveraging behavioural analysis and AI for more reliable statistics on forcibly displaced populations will undertake a systematic review of case studies and review learning from cognitive testing (examining how people understand questions), to standardise a set of identification questions for refugees and IDPs in household surveys that can be widely applied to improve harmonisation of forced displacement statistics.

Expected results include enhanced reliability of identifying forcibly displaced individuals in household surveys, driving more accurate inclusion of refugee, IDP, and stateless communities in official statistics. This will facilitate the production of more comparable data and tracking of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) broken down by displacement status.

In the field of migration and displacement statistics, three key sets of recommendations guide global understanding and measurement: the International Recommendations on Refugee Statistics (2018), the International Recommendations on IDP Statistics (2020), and the recently revised Recommendations on Statistics of International Migration and Temporary Mobility (2025).

Identifying the existing alignment, gaps and opportunities for further harmonisation between these frameworks is crucial, as the populations they address — international migrants and refugees, internal migrants and internally displaced persons — often overlap or are closely related in practice.

In 2025, TSG2 launched a workstream under the leadership of Statistics South Africa to address this topic and advance methodological consistency in migration and displacement statistics. The work will include a desk review of the Recommendations alongside other relevant documents and practical experience of countries, to support national statistical systems in developing a more coherent and standardised approach to measuring population movements.

The IRIS outlines two measures related to the concept of durable solutions, based on the IASC Framework on Durable Solutions for IDPs: the exit measure to help determine outflows from the IDP statistical stock and the progress measure to assess advancements towards durable solutions in a broader sense. Both measures involve comparison with a non-displaced comparator population. The progress measure aims to allow decision-makers to understand at a glance in which aspects of vulnerability IDPs are struggling compared to others and in which they are doing relatively well.

TSG2 is working on this topic during 2025–2026, in the workstream led by the Joint IDP Profiling Service. Through a systematic desk review, empirical testing and wider consultations, the process will help inform the development of a statistical measure for countries to assess progress towards durable solutions that can be used both to inform and monitor implementation of relevant national laws, policies and strategies.

The IRIS outlines two measures related to the concept of durable solutions: the progress measure to assess advancements towards durable solutions and the exit measure to help determine outflows from the IDP statistical stock. Both measures involve comparison with a non-displaced comparator population.

No definitive guidance on measuring the end of internal displacement currently exists, meaning practices to make this assessment are varied. Statistically, this gap creates questions concerning when to stop counting people as IDPs or how to fully determine the outflow from the IDP stock.

As committed in the IRIS, EGRISS is working to complete the composite measure for overcoming key displacement-related vulnerabilities, intended to support the production of official statistics on internal displacement by measuring exits from the IDP stock. TSG2 produced an initial paper in 2023 to assess the remaining methodological challenges. Work is continuing under the leadership of the World Bank and the JDC to develop a concrete proposal for further discussion with affected countries and the wider EGRISS membership.

As outlined in both the IRRS and the IRIS, several measures rely on comparing the situation of refugees or IDPs with their host communities or another relevant non-displaced population — the comparator population. This is particularly relevant to set the targets or thresholds for measures related to refugee integration and durable solutions for IDPs, and is hence crucial for evidence-based decision making and shaping key integration policies.

Despite the term being increasingly relevant in policy discourse and operations, definitions vary from the national or general population to more specific sub-groups. TSG2, under the leadership of UNHCR and Stanford University, developed a methodological paper — Defining the comparator population for refugee and IDP statistics: From the concept of the "host community" to statistical definitions — that mapped, reviewed and empirically tested different options for this definition. The paper outlines recommendations for a robust statistical definition of the comparator population that can be applied in different contexts and applications of forced displacement statistics.

The UN's Sustainable Development Goals aim to create a better future for everyone, everywhere — including refugees, IDPs and stateless populations. Statistical inclusion and data disaggregation are key to understanding how these groups are faring. Building on the 12 priority SDG indicators identified for disaggregation by displacement status, as well as the additional indicators identified as relevant for stateless populations in the IROSS, EGRISS aims to promote their use and provide guidance to assess the identified indicators.

Published in October 2024, TSG2 developed a methodological paper under the leadership of IOM and the EGRISS Secretariat: Capturing priority SDG indicators in refugee, internal displacement and statelessness contexts. The paper provides an analysis of data collection practice and computation methods for 14 prioritised SDG indicators and identifies specific considerations that may be required to produce better data on refugee, IDP and stateless populations for these indicators.