The United Nations Statistics Division issues standards and methods approved by the Statistical Commission to assist national statistical authorities and other producers of official statistics in planning and carrying out successful population and housing censuses.

For the 2010 World Population and Housing Census Programme, the Statistical Commission at its 36th session, requested that the United Nations Statistics Division proceed with its work on the revision and update of the Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses. The Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses, Revision 2 was adopted by the Statistical Commission at its 38th session in 2007. The main objective of the Principles and Recommendations is to provide international principles and recommendations for use by national statistical offices and census officials in countries throughout the world in planning and organizing their censuses.

In addition, the United Nations Statistics Division has issued the following guidelines