Moldova's statisticians explore how to measure integration

The OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities and UN Human Rights Moldova held the second in-person training of their "Applied Data Science Skills for Measuring the Integration of Diverse Societies" pilot course on 4 and 5 December 2025 in Orhei, Moldova. This long-term training course started in July this year and will continue throughout 2026. This training combined Python programming with a human rights-based approach to data that aims to integrate technical and normative skills in statistical work.

Statisticians from Moldova's National Bureau of Statistics tackled real-world challenges, such as constructing disaggregated human rights indicators using OHCHR's framework, handling complex survey data from the EU's statistics on income and living conditions and dealing with classification of multiple response data on identity-related variables. Sessions covered data wrangling, exploratory data analysis, data visualization, and competent usage of large language models for accelerating Python learning and data analysis.

The pilot course is part of the High Commissioner's broader initiative to explore the outlines of a comprehensive framework for measuring the integration of diverse societies across the OSCE area. By building statistical capacity in OSCE participating States, the programme aims to ensure that integration policies are grounded in robust data collection and analysis methods that respect human rights principles and contribute to social cohesion, in alignment with international human rights standards and The Ljubljana Guidelines on the Integration of Diverse Societies.