|
|
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
IRAQ: Plans for census underway
BAGHDAD, 10 February 2004 (IRIN) - The Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) has invited the United Nations to help assess plans for a future census. But according to Iraqi officials, strategic planning for the country's next census would require extensive rehabilitation of the government infrastructure if a proper census was undertaken.
"Preparations for the 1997 census had taken 10 months," Louay Haqi, who oversees the Census Bureau in the planning ministry told IRIN in Baghdad. Since a census in Iraq is done every 10 years, the next one was not due until 2007. But the three Kurdish governerates were not included in the previous census, and because of a scheduled general election, there was an urgent need for another census to be carried out, he explained.
Under the October 1997 census, the Iraqi population was estimated at just over 22 million (22,046,244). While the 1987 census had included all of Iraq's 18 governorates, the 1997 census covered only 15 governorates. The population of the northern Kurdish governerates stood at 2.8 million, according to a separate census.
In order to hold a general election, there is a need to carry out a census to establish the voter register. The Shi'ite majority in Iraq are demanding direct elections, with their spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani leading the call. They want the poll to take place before 30 June, the date of the handover of sovereignty from the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to a hand picked Iraqi transitional government.
Instead, the CPA had called for regional caucuses to elect a national government next year to take over from the US and lead Iraq to a new constitution and elections.
Early elections were deemed impossible by Haqi when a census needs to be carried out first. "The census requires a lot of work. It's not just the work of the ministry of planning. It needs coordination and other organisations are involved. It needs maps, an agreement between the north and the south, security and it needs all the government circles to go back to work as normal, which I don't think will be able to happen before June 30," he explained.
This view was echoed by other IGC members. "To hold an honest election, we need a better security situation. The lack of a voter register means national elections are impractical as some council members argue the vote on self-government should be delayed until September next year when the census is completed and a voter register is available," IGC official, Hammed al Kifa'i told IRIN in Baghdad.
Meanwhile, a UN election assessment team arrived in Iraq on Saturday to assess whether it would be possible to hold elections before the CPA hands sovereignty back to Iraqis. Details of the UN team's agenda are sketchy due to security concerns. "I hope the work of this team will help resolve the impasse over the transitional political process leading to the establishment of a provisional government for Iraq," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a statement from UN headquarters in New York.
"I encourage efforts by the people of Iraq to form an Iraqi government based on the rule of law that affords equal rights and justice to all Iraqi citizens without regard to ethnicity, religion or gender. I also remain committed to all efforts aimed at the promotion and protection of all the human rights of the Iraqi people. The United Nations will offer whatever help it can to support the right of the Iraqi people to chart their own destiny and to live in peace, with respect and dignity," he added.
But according to the CPA, rushing tom complete a census in this time frame given the security environment would not achieve the best results.
Iraqi census officials have already devised a detailed plan to count the country's entire population next year and prepare a voter register that would open the way to national elections in September 2005. Haqi said his staff had prepared a detailed timetable for a census that was stripped down from the 73 questions asked in the last census six years ago, to 12 basic demographic queries, enabling the work to be done much faster than the normal two-year time frame.
In the past, the bureau would use 400,000 school teachers to visit every household in Iraq on one day to carry out the census. The bureau estimated the new plan, awaiting approval from the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) since November 2003, to cost US $75 million.
The IGC, which has been pushing for the UN to come back to Iraq since it withdrew staff last year following the devastating 19 August suicide bombing, welcomed the UN team's arrival but warned its findings would not be binding.
"We are glad the United Nations replied, but we are not bound by the conclusions that they will reach," Mohsin Abdel Hamid, current president of the IGC, told a news conference in the Iraqi capital. Hamid said the council was committed to the June handover as it did not want to delay the formal end of the US occupation.
Theme(s): (IRIN) Conflict, (IRIN) Governance, (IRIN) Human Rights
[ENDS]
This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
