Iraq will carry out a census in November. It will be the first general population count conducted since 1997 and the first to include the Kurdistan Region’s provinces since 1987.
A pilot census involving 350 teams began across the country on Wednesday in Erbil. The teams spent the day marking the neighborhoods and the residential areas in some parts of the Kurdish capital. Data collection is scheduled for Thursday.
“We will collect specific information about each residential unit, every house, in terms of how many members there are in a family, how many male and female,” Mariwan Hassan, technology head of the field teams, told Rudaw.
“We then collect information regarding the place, in terms of the area and how it is used, and also its access to services like water and electricity,” he said.
The latest census in 1997 counted 19 million Iraqis. A separate count for the Kurdistan Region put the population of the three Kurdish provinces at 2.8 million. The country’s population now is at an estimated 43 million.
After the pilot census is conducted, the field teams will start a 15-day census in some parts of the country in late May.
The questionnaire will be conducted digitally and the information will be stored in a data center – the first in Iraq. The authorities have said that this will help to realize the results quicker and allow the relevant departments to analyze the data.
Iraq has been discussing carrying out a new census for years, a move that should contribute to the resolution of historic problems like Baathist-era Arabization, the status of disputed Kirkuk, which is claimed by both the federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), and the size of the KRG’s share of federal funds.
A census planned for 2020 was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
A key obstacle to conducting a census between Baghdad and Erbil has been the ethnicity question. Last month, Iraq said it will carry out the census without surveying its citizens on their ethnicities.
