CIVIL is organizing a panel discussion “Census: Statistics, not politics” on Tuesday, March 30, at the Park & Spa Residence Hotel, Skopje, starting at 1 p.m. Participants will be Apostol Simovski, director of the State Statistical Office, Professor Mirjana Najchevska, human rights expert, Slavjanka Petrovska, Member of Parliament and member of SDSM and Ljupcho Zikov, editor-in-chief of “Capital”. The panel will be moderated by Xhabir Deralla, CIVIL.

In accordance with the protection measures against Covid-19, the panel discussion will be held without an audience, but will be broadcast live on the Facebook page of CIVIL, and the contents resulting from the panel discussion will be published on the media platform of the organization in Macedonian, Albanian and English. Special videos will be posted on the CIVIL YouTube channel. As always, the newsrooms with which CIVIL cooperates are invited to download all media content with appropriate attribution and link.

The focus of the panel discussion, the day before the census process begins, is not only the need to separate politics from statistics, but also to call for the census to be conducted as a statistical operation. It is important for the public to be informed of what they can expect from the census process, the security protocols regarding the Covid-19 pandemic, and the importance of the census at the local and national levels.

The panel discussion will last about an hour and a half. During the discussion, the CIVIL team will follow the reactions and questions on social networks and will convey some of them to the participants in the discussion.

The event is part of the “Civic Lens” project, funded by the US National Endowment for Democracy.