The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) participated, from March 4 to 7, in New York, USA, in the 56th Session of the UN Statistical Commission, which gathered representatives of National Statistical Offices of 192 countries and dozens of civil society entities from all over the world. 

The IBGE delegation, formed by the president, Marcio Pochmann, by deputy directors of the Directorate of Surveys, Vladimir Gonçalves Miranda, and of the Directorate of Geosciences, Gustavo de Carvalho Cayres da Silva, besides the special advisor to the presidency, Cimar Azeredo Pereira, and the head of the IBGE's Institutional Relations Department, Andrea Diniz da Silva, also attended, throughout the week, events of a side program, bilateral meetings with representatives of partner countries, including BRICS members and international bodies. 

In the 56th Session, the IBGE delegation participated in discussions and decision making processes related to relevant topics of interest to national statistical offices, such as: Population Censuses, Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics, System of National Accounts, 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, social, demographic, economic, crime and justice, food security, environmental statistics. 

According to the president of the IBGE, Marcio Pochmann, “this edition of the meeting of the UN Statistical Commission has made a great difference as there is doubt the discussions about technological innovations, new sources of data, artificial intelligence, among others, are more active. Another fundamental aspect of the Commission is the commitment to disseminate best practices and strengthen national and international statistical systems and this agenda has been treated in an effective way here, together with the fundamental principles of official statistics."

The diplomat in charge of statistical issues in the Permanent Mission of Brazil to the UN, Bruno Palazon Imparato, says that “the active participation of Brazil in the 56th session of the UN Statistical Commission is an essential step for a country that has been preparing to come back to the agency and an elected member in 2026”.

The Brazilian delegation discussed topics in the main agenda and gave talks on behalf of Brazil and of  Latin America and the Caribbean, with special emphasis on economic issues such as the approval of the update of the new System of National Accounts, which discusses measures of aspects related to welfare and the use of data science and artificial intelligence for economic statistics. 

In the realm of social statistics, the approval of the implementation of 2020 Censuses and the proposal for the implementation of 2030 Census programs were also discussed. The joint declaration for Latin America and the Caribbean about the topic of population and social statistics was carried out by the IBGE in recognition of the importance of these topics and of the gains that can result from the incorporation of geolocation data and administrative records for these areas. Within data science, a proposal is the creation of a special task force for the study of artificial intelligence for official statistics. “As for side sessions, it is worth mentioning the discussion about the future of national statistical institutes in the combat to the dissemination of misinformation," said the deputy director of surveys, Vladimir Gonçalves Miranda.

Participation in the 56th Session of the UN Statistical Commission also represented an opportunity for the IBGE to present a relevant position regarding the environmental agenda and on the integration of geospatial and statistical information, environmental and climate change statistics and censuses, in discussions such as the one conducted by the Expert Group on Environment Statistics (EG-ECCS), about the UN statistical program. According to Gustavo Cayres, deputy director of Geosciences, “the relevance of IBGE's participation in expert groups in each area provides important material for side events to the Commission, as a way to highlight activities in the technical areas and the relevance of partnerships and interlocution with other actors, for example, the participation in the Expert Group in the integration of geospatial and statistical information (EG-ISGI)”.

Besides the main agenda and side events, the IBGE participated in a number of bilateral meetings with the objective of strengthening and expanding partnerships with national statistical offices and international bodies. The stronger South-South cooperation had its place in the meeting with presidents and other representatives of statistical offices in Namibia, Chile and the United Kingdom, discussing, respectively, the support to the conduction of the Census of Agriculture and for the use of geospatial data, the cooperation for access to data from the 2022 Census with reference to the count of persons from Chile living in Brazil and the resumption of a cooperation agreement between the IBGE and the ONS.

Projects with PNUD and GPSDD

In this week of events the IBGE had two meetings with the teams from the United Nations Development Programme (PNUD). With the director of PNUD for Latin America and the Caribbean, Michelli Muschett, they debated the cooperative organization of events to discuss the agenda of human development, encompassing BRICS, MERCOSUL and CPLP countries (Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries), especially within the context of COP30.

With Pedro Conceição, director of the Office for Human Development FReport, they discussed a partnership for the production of the Human Development Index for small areas, for the validation of indicators on the Human Climate Horizon platform, and toadvance in projects with the use of satellite images to monitor changes in the territory, especially in areas where statistical production is not enough to monitor changes in inter-census periods. 

And with the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD), the IBGE discussed progress in relation to the partnership with the Ministry of the Environment for the production of climate changes, an action supported by the GPSDD by means of the initiative Power of Data, besides foster understanding for the conduction of an event gathering the 8 countries that share the Amazon Forest (Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and french Guyana), to discuss how a common agenda is related to the challenges in the protection of biodiversity. For the head of international relations, Andrea Diniz da Silva, “the cooperative agenda with other statistical institutes and with international bodies is important for the IBGE to recover protagonism in the international scenario and the roles as leader in the statistical community, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

BRICS

IBGE, which throughout 2025 will be President of BRICS and its 11 member countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Indonesia, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia), promoted, in the UN Brazil Mission, in New York, the 1st Meeting of Heads of Statistical Agencies in BRICS countries.

During the event the IBGE presented a consolidated proposal of indicator of the digital era for BRICS countries and the Global South, besides the creation of work groups to analyze economic, social and environmental indicators within the BRICS and of the work schedule for 2025 (read more here). According to Cimar Azeredo, advisor to the presidency, "the meeting was an opportunity for the IBGE to present proposals that have as theie main objective to promote a clearer vision of the potentialities ofBRICS through the production and analysis of group indicators."