Population Figures & People in Need
Throughout the Humanitarian Programme Cycle, population figures are used as a basis for estimating needs, planning response activities, and tracking the delivery of humanitarian assistance. In this video, we will go through how to use five core hashtags and a handful of common attributes to describe population figures and people in need.
Key Takeaways
Use general age attributes in addition to custom age ranges.
When using a custom age range attribute like +age_5_18s, we recommend that you also use the closest core age attribute like +children to help with search and analysis. For example, you should use #inneed+f+children+age_5_18 for the number of girls aged 5 to 18 in need of humanitarian assistance.
There are five core HXL hashtags for humanitarian population figures.
The core HXL hashtags #population, #targeted, #inneed, #targeted and #reached align with common terminology for humanitarian population and caseload figures.
Always use numbers.
The values in the columns under #population, #affected, #inneed, #targeted, and #reached must always be numeric. If the column contains text descriptions or codes for populations of interest, use the hashtag #beneficiary instead.
Frequently Asked Questions
HXL has a selection of attributes for distinguishing sex and age. For sex, it has +f for female, +m for male, and +i for non-gender-binary; for broad age groups, it has +infants, +children, +adolescents, +adults, and +elderly. You can also use +total to distinguish a column that sums up the others. Here are some examples, using #affected +idps (number of internally displaced people) as a base:
| #affected +idps +f +children | number of internally-displaced girls |
| #affected +idps +m +adults | number of internally-displaced men |
| #affected +idps +total | total number of internally-displaced people |
Sometimes, you will want to include specific age groups in addition to the broad ones in the HXL core. To do that, create your own attribute with the starting with “age_” followed by the first number, an underscore, and a second number. For example, to tag girls age 5-12, you could use #affected +f +children +age_5_12. Note that it’s still important to include the general +children attribute.
HXL uses the attribute +ind to specify that a column of numbers applies to individuals, or +hh if the column applies to households. Individuals is assumed by default. For example, a column with the number of refugee households targeted for assistance would be described using #targeted+refugees+hh whereas the number of refugees targeted for assistance could be described using either #targeted+refugees or #targeted+refugees+ind.