The Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) is organizing a visual arts competition on sustainable development in the Arab region, to encourage artists and photographers from the region to portray the reality of sustainable development in Arab countries through photographs, videos or infographics/animation. ESCWA is organizing the competition in collaboration with the United Nations Information Centre in Beirut.

The Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) is organizing in cooperation with the Central Statistical Organization (CSO) in Iraq a series of webinars on Population and Housing Censuses in Iraq.

The workshop explores recent developments in statistical methodologies and new data sources for measuring and monitoring poverty at various levels and dimensions. Specifically, the workshop aims to provide guidance to the NSOs on new knowledge and methodologies to measure and monitor SDGs and Agenda 2030 and identify opportunities, challenges and limitations of using big data for official poverty measurement in low and middle income countries. The workshop will also explore the potential of high frequency surveys to monitor poverty over time and across small areas, particularly targeting vulnerable groups such as refugee populations, and identify future research needs in statistical methodologies and the use of new data sources for living conditions and poverty indicators. Ultimately the workshop will help to achieve a common and improved understanding of new knowledge, methodologies and data sources that would contribute to monitoring poverty over time and across small areas and improving the measurement of some living conditions and poverty indicators for Goals 1 and 10.