The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) is convening the Eighth Meeting of the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on Demographic and Social Statistics for Arab Countries, to be held online on 24 June 2026. Established by the ESCWA Statistical Committee in 2015, the TAG is mandated to provide recommendations on ESCWA’s strategies and work programmes related to demographic and social development statistics, with the aim of enhancing and advancing these areas.

The meeting will bring together representatives from national statistical offices across the Arab region, alongside experts from leading international and regional organizations including UNFPA, UNICEF, WHO, ILO, UNHCR, IOM, UNESCO, the World Bank, UNDP, and others.

The eighth meeting will focus on four key objectives: reviewing ESCWA’s programme of work on supporting the promotion and modernization of demographic and social statistics; assessing data availability against the core list of demographic and social indicators and proposing methodologies to address gaps; presenting findings on forced displacement statistics through the report “Enhance and Integrate Refugee and Displacement Statistics in the Arab Countries”; and discussing emerging methodological issues and capacity-development programmes related to population and housing censuses, civil registration and vital statistics, and broader social statistics.

The meeting will be conducted in Arabic and English, with simultaneous interpretation available.

For further information, please contact Mr. Ismail Lubbad, Team Leader of the Demographic and Social Statistics Team, ESCWA, at [email protected] or +961 1 978736.