At its 36th session in March 2005, the UN Statistical Commission of the United Nations recommends to Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) a resolution on the implementation of the 2010 round of Population and Housing censuses (2004-2015). The UN Statistical Commission of the United Nations recommends resolution (A/2005/13) focused on the importance of the 2010 round of population and housing censuses in meeting data needs for follow-up activities to the Millennium Summit, the International Conference on Population and Development, the World Summit for Social Development, the fourth World Conference on Women, and the United Nations conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II), and to the other United Nations regional meetings. Since, population and housing censuses provide national data to satisfy users’ needs for development planning, evidence-based decision making, and research, the UN Statistical Commission at its 43th round in February 2012, confirmed the importance of establishing regional Task Forces in population censuses.

In order to enhance the regional capacity of some Arab member countries to collect, analyze process, disseminate and utilize the results of 2010 population and housing censuses round, UNFPA and ESCWA signed an agreement to implement a series of workshops and training sessions on population censuses in  9 Arab countries (Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria).

ESCWA Statistics Division organized jointly with the UNFPA, its first workshop on population census preparedness for the population round 2010 (2005-2014) in Amman, Jordan during the period 18- 19 December, 2011.

As a part of the joint project between ESCWA and UNFPA, ESCWA Statistics Division is organizing a second workshop on population census preparedness for the population round 2010 (2005-2014) in Tunis during the period 3-5 July, 2012.

The outputs of this workshop will be used to improve plans and implementation of data collection and dissemination of population data in the Arab region. In addition, this workshop is expected to help us identify needs for capacity building in specific areas in undertaking population censuses. Finally, the workshop will discuss an establishment of a working group of population census for the current and the next population and housing censes rounds for the Arab countries.