A high-level expert mission of the United Nations visited Turkmenistan to assist the Government of the country in preparing for a comprehensive census of the population and housing stock of Turkmenistan.

As reported on the website turkmenistan.unfpa.org, the mission included six high-level technical advisers from UNFPA, the United Nations Statistics Division and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. They held a meeting with Deputy Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers and Minister of Foreign Affairs Rashid Meredov and Chairman of the State Committee of Turkmenistan on Statistics Dovletgeldy Amanmuhammedov. The parties discussed systems and mechanisms for ensuring the quality of the census to ensure transparency, effective accountability and international reliability of the census, as well as to guarantee the independence of the census process and results by applying international principles and recommendations for population and housing censuses.

Moreover, the experts met with Deputy Chairman and technical experts of the State Statistics Committee responsible for the census to review and discuss the methodological standards of the census.

As it known, in Turkmenistan from the 17th to 27th of December 2022 a comprehensive census of the population and housing stock will be conducted. For the country it is a unique opportunity to collect, distribute and use of detailed data for national strategic planning and development policy in accordance with the priorities of the National social and economic development Program for 2022-2052, as well as to measure progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

UNFPA and UN agencies have taken the obligation on rendering technical and political support in conduction of a Comprehensive census of the population and housing stock of Turkmenistan in accordance with the international standards at all stages of the census, including registration, data processing, distribution, analysis and use of census data.

During the visit, the head of the mission, Mr. Srdjan Mrkic, Head of the Demographic Statistics Division of the UN Statistics Division, noted:

“The mission concluded that the Government of Turkmenistan is on the right way in conduction of census of the population and housing stock with the use of modern approaches and advanced technologies, as well as to timely and complete publication of preliminary and final census results. Mission approved the commitment of the United Nations Organizations to continue rendering assistance to the Government of Turkmenistan for ensuring complete compliance of the population census with international standards at all stages of planning, data collection, editing, processing and distribution of its results.”

As a result of a comprehensive consultations with the Government, the mission's experts have developed a number of recommendations.

Recently we informed that servers for data collection from UNFPA were received by Turkmenistan for conduction of a comprehensive census of the population-2022.