Demographic data are crucial for proposing and formulating socio-economic policies and plans. Although census data are available in every member county except Lebanon, these data are rarely used for needed demographic estimates owing to a marked shortage in the number of skilled statisticians and population analysts in the National Statistical Offices. The Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) annual publication lacks many basic demographic estimates from member countries due to their inability to produce them using census, survey and administrative data. Vital registration data (the classic source of information for producing fertility and mortality estimates) are often unavailable for use in statistics or too incomplete for use in demographic estimation in the Arab region.
Within the framework of the efforts made by ESCWA in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in the area of strengthening national capacities in compiling, disseminating and analyzing population data, ESCWA organized training on population estimates to its member countries in Amman in 2012. In addition, ESCWA organized an Expert Group Meeting on data quality and on evaluation of census age data in June 2013 in Beirut. The participants in both previous events asked ESCWA to organize a series of training in demographic statistics and mainly in advanced demographic training.
To this end, ESCWA in collaboration with WHO and UNFPA, is organizing a training workshop in methods of assessing the completeness of death registration in some Arab countries during the 15-18 December, 2014 in Cairo, Egypt. Following this training workshop, participants will be able to apply demographic methods to assess the completeness of death registration using excel and other appropriate software programs.
القاهرة، مصر
