BACKGROUND

The crisis caused by the pandemic has highlighted the importance of population and housing censuses as a fundamental tool for decision-making regarding prevention, mitigation and targeting of resources and to provide valuable information in the identification and characterization of vulnerable populations and its distribution

The COVID-19 pandemic coincided with the year zero recommended for conducting the censuses, impacting numerous countries in the region that had planned to conduct its census between 2020 and 2022 which in most cases had to be postponed as they were affected not only by the challenges and uncertainties inherent to the health emergency, but also due to budget reductions, demanding reschedule, acceleration of technological innovations, drop in citizen participation due to physical distancing and fear, among other factors. Such is the case that some countries in the region still don’t have guaranteed resources or defined dates for conducting their censuses, or have had to accelerate its implementation, without the proper conditions to guarantee obtaining quality information.

OBJECTIVES

The objective of this side event is to attain, from the perspective of the directors and managers of the National Statistical Institutes, the main challenges that the Latin American and the Caribbean region has been facing in the planning and deploying of their population and housing censuses in the context of a pandemic COVID-19 and learn about the strategies applied to ensure a timely implementation and a quality result.