formal and informal groups of refugees and migrants. A Face‑ book advertisement and other proactive social media and network outreach approaches were used to contact organi‑ zations working with refugees and migrants communities in and from focus countries that might be outside the primary networks. The survey was closed on 31 October 2020. The report focuses on descriptive analyses. A frequency analysis was performed to get an overall sense of the vari‑ ables combined with cross tabulations to indicate any rela‑ tionship between variables. Challenges in data collection and methodological limitations The survey findings give a brief overview of the situation for refugees and migrants who answered the survey and not a generalized picture of refugees and migrants globally. There were a number of reasons for this, particularly relat‑ ed to the extraneous circumstances around the pandemic and difficulties in collecting data from hard-to-reach pop‑ ulation groups. However the survey did capture informa‑ tion on the situation of refugees and migrants living in 170 countries. Please note that this does not indicate the sit‑ uation in the 170 countries were systematically surveyed. The urgent nature of the COVID‑19 pandemic called for the very rapid development and distribution of the survey. COVID‑19 also hampered traditional methods of survey outreach. The strategy to disseminate the online survey wide‑ ly among people, organizations and within social media groups and communities, and that allowed respondents to complete the survey on their own devices, worked well in some groups but was less successful for other groups, pos‑ sibly missing some groupings of refugees and migrants. This also led to unintended bias such as unequal distribu‑ tion of participation rate across regions, as well age groups. Limited access to devices and the Internet, among other reasons such a low literacy, made it difficult to achieve uni‑ form access to all population groups and this was aggra‑ vated by heightened financial stress, insecurity and rising unemployment due to COVID‑19. Any cross-regional and other comparisons are therefore for illustration purposes only and should not be used to infer causality or other as‑ sociations. recruitment strategy was implemented in several countries in various parts of the world in an attempt to cover most of the major migration routes and population concentrations. Local promoters of the survey, listed above, identified re‑ spondents and facilitated survey completion. Such efforts not only increased the survey responses from these coun‑ tries but also increased the representation of respondents in other countries where they had migrated. However, as indicated in Figs 1-3 below, the survey respondents do not fully represent the diversity of the refugee and migration population globally and regionally. Hence, the regional comparisons are for illustrative purposes and does not in‑ dicate causality or associations in terms of the geographi‑ cal location of refugees and migrants. Added to this, physical distancing and other public health social measures, travelbans and other restrictions imposed to control the spread of the pandemic, were clear challeng‑ es to overcome to have a representative sample of the various population groups targeted and presented in this report. Such limitations are documented in this report as a caution regarding further interpretation and generalization of the findings captured in this advocacy brief. Such challenges, however, do not diminish the global infor‑ mation the survey collected. Despite the issues described, the survey results provide a global overview of the impacts of COVID‑19 pandemic experienced by refugees and mi‑ grants. Although the pandemic impacted all from around the world, refugees and many migrants, especially if in an irregular situation, find themselves in a difficult situation because of socioeconomic situations and precarious living and working conditions. The survey aimed to capture the concerns of such populations groups and to highlight the level of impact the pandemic brought about to them. The survey findings also may provide valuable information to the Global Programme on Health and Migration and WHO on how to design effective policies and impactful programming including for refugees and migrants. Lessons learned from the survey can be important insights for the Programme on how to overcome future challenges on data collection and information gathering. In some countries, the survey outreach was further con‑ strained by national restrictions on specific social media outlets, combined with incompatibility between local net‑ works and the electronic survey. To overcome this and to reach harder-to-reach population groups, a more strategic The ApartTogether survey | 5