ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdistan Region on Tuesday started the listing and numbering process in preparation for the much-anticipated census.
The process is set to run for two months, according to Guhdar Mohammed Ali, the head of the technical and field division of the Kurdistan Region’s census, adding that after 50 days, the enumeration process will commence.
“The census begins on November 20 and will last for 20 days. A curfew will be imposed on the first and second days of the census,” Ali said.
Listing and numbering is a process of identifying and recording housing units and the number of households within a designated area during a population count.
This year’s census will be Iraq’s first general population count since 1997 and the first to include the provinces in the Kurdistan Region since 1987.
The last population census in 1997 counted 19 million Iraqis. A separate count put the population of the Kurdish provinces at 2.8 million. Estimates now put Iraq’s population around 50 million. A census planned for 2020 was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The ethnicity question had been a key obstacle to conducting a census between Baghdad and Erbil. In April, Iraq said it would carry out the census without surveying its citizens on their ethnicities.
The removal of ethnicity from the count has sparked concerns, with some politicians warning that it may further complicate the situation in disputed areas. Ali said the census does not pose any danger to the Kurdistan Region “if the federal government does not use it for other matters.”
A census could contribute to the resolution of many problems like Baathist-era Arabization, the status of disputed Kirkuk, which is claimed by both the federal government and the the Kurdistan Region Government (KRG), and the KRG’s share of the federal budget.
