13th February 2024
In the lead up to the 55th session of the United Nations Statistical Commission, the EGRISS organised a virtual side-event on Inclusive National Statistics: Forced Displacement, Statelessness and Census.
With over 70 participants, the session was moderated by the Aissatou Dicko, Head of the World Bank-UNHCR Joint Data Center on Forced Displacement, and featured a range of experienced speakers including Oleg Cara Director General with the National Statistical Institute of Moldova, Venant Habarugira Director of Census with the National Institute of Statistics Rwanda, Rachel Beaven, Director Statistics Division with UNESCAP and Natalia Baal, Head of EGRISS Secretariat.
The event aimed to maintain visibility of the topic of refugee, IDP and statelessness statistics in the context of the UN Statistical Commission. It also enabled a timely discussion on the inclusion of these population groups in national data production processes, with a focus on Population and Housing Censuses given the ongoing revision of the Principles & Recommendations in advance of the 2030 census round.
Presentations complemented each other bring attention to examples from three different regions: African, Europe and Asia-Pacific. They featured lessons learnt from Rwanda’s effective inclusion of refugees and stateless in their 2022 census, Moldova’s commitment to include refugees in the 2024 census and use of the IRRS in the planning stages, as well as UNESCAP’s identified opportunities and challenges in Asia and the Pacific.
The EGRISS presentation presented the wider global context, sharing the 2023 Annual GAIN survey results, which demonstrate increased use of the International Recommendations to guide data collection and statistical production processes in 31 countries, including several examples of national censuses in the post-pandemic period.
In this way, the event picked up on the conversation initiated in the October 2023 webinar co-hosted with UNFPA and continued to build on the momentum demonstrated by close to 100 statistical inclusion pledges made during the December 2023 Global Refugee Forum (GRF).
Relevant documents:
Concept Note of the side-event
Recording of the 55th UNSC side-event
