Experience of Belstat in measuring migration and ethno-cultural characteristics presented at the UNECE meetings

The Meeting of the Group of Experts on Migration Statistics and the Workshop on the International Recommendations on Statistics on Refugees, Internally Displaced Persons, and Statelessness were held on 6 – 8 May 2024 in Geneva, Switzerland.

In the course of their work, the experts addressed a number of issues related to the production of migration statistics in the UNECE region, identified ways to strengthen regional co-operation, and shared their experience in producing official statistics on refugees, internally displaced and stateless persons.

The Republic of Belarus was represented by Zhanna Vasilevskaya, Deputy Chairperson of Belstat, who made a presentation on the experience of Belarus in measuring migration and ethno-cultural characteristics during the 2019 population census, as well as new approaches to disseminating census results.

Zhanna Vasilevskaya noted, ‘One of the main sources of data on the number of migrants permanently residing in the country but born outside the country or having arrived from abroad, as well as data on the ethnic composition of the country's population, spoken and native languages, is the population census. The results obtained during the census are the most complete, universal and comparable, and allow for cross-country comparisons of internal and external migration.’


According to the obtained results, changes in the size and intensity of migration flows occurred in the country during the inter-census period. Internal migration significantly exceeded external migration and totalled 3.4 million people, showing women to be more mobile (57.6 per cent).

‘The overwhelming majority of respondents who changed their place of residence – 78.7% – had lived at the place of stay for 5 years or more. The reasons why people changed their place of residence varied. They mainly indicated family circumstances (54.8%), work (19.8%) and return to the previous place of residence (8.2%),’ said Deputy Chairperson of Belstat. ‘According to the latest census, the share of Belarusians in the country's population continued to increase. Thus, if in 2009 there were 837 Belarusians per 1,000 population, in 2019 this figure was 849 Belarusians. In total, according to the census results, 156 nationalities live in the country,’ specified Zhanna Vasilevskaya.

Among the ways of data dissemination, the information and analytical system ‘Population Censuses Results’, a 10 per cent microdata sample of the 2019 census data, and the information and analytical system ‘Geostatistics’ were of particular interest to the meeting participants.

‘Belstat is constantly improving approaches to data dissemination, using new formats and methods of their presentation,’ Belstat representative emphasised.


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