First Meeting of the Committee for Statistical Training
Date: 04-06 August 2009
Venue: Cairo - Egypt

The Statistical, Economic and Social Research and Training Centre for Islamic Countries (SESRIC) participated in the First Meeting of the Committee for Statistical Training organised by the League of Arab States in accordance with the recommendation of the 33rd Meeting of the Standing Technical Committee for Statistics. The Meeting was held at the Headquarters of the League of Arab States in Cairo during the period 4-6 August 2009.

The Meeting was attended by the National Statistical Organisations (NSOs) of seven Arab states namely, Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The General Secretariat of the League of Arab States, the Arab Institute for Training and Research in Statistics (AITRS), and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) also attended the Meeting.

Mr. Nader Jamil Abdulhamid represented SESRIC at the Meeting and presented a paper titled “Overcoming Problems Facing Statistical Training in the Arab Area”. The paper focused on challenges facing statistics and statistical training in the Arab area and on investigating ways and means of overcoming those challenges. In doing so, the paper built in general on the situation dominating most of the member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) which is, to a large extent, valid for the Arab area as well. Mr. Abdulhamid briefed the participants about the role of SESRIC in statistical capacity building. Participants were specifically briefed on the StatCaB Programme, TROP Project, OIC Statistical Working Group, and the First Meeting Planned for the NSOs.