MADRID 22 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Iraq will complete its first national census in almost four decades late tonight, a tool considered by both the Iraqi Government and the United Nations as essential to outline the clearest possible panorama of the country for any type of initiative to be undertaken. in the coming years.
The census began last Wednesday with the collaboration of the United Nations Population Fund (UNDP) and, unlike the last count in 1987, this time it includes the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, protagonist for decades of clashes with the central authorities of Baghdad on aid to its population and distribution of oil profits.
“The preliminary results of the census will not take long,” explained the spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Planning, Abdul Zhara al Hindawi, whose department will announce next week, if there are no delays, the number of inhabitants of the country (which estimates previous estimates indicated about 45 million inhabitants), “including the population of each governorate, the urban and rural population, and each age group.”
However, this census leaves aside the issue of ethnicity, given that the Iraqi Government has opted for a maximalist perspective that will not address the historical tensions between the Arab population and the Kurdish minority, in a decision that, as indicated Al Hindawi does not contravene international standards but, on the contrary, responds to their recommendations.
In addition, the Iraqi government is trying to ease the concerns of Kurdish authorities, who fear that any documented decline in their population will reduce the group’s political influence and economic rights in the country’s sectarian power-sharing system.
In fact, this same Friday the advisor to the United Nations Population Fund in Iraq, Mahdi al Alaq, confirmed today that the results of the census will be released in the form of data and tables that “will not be related to individual characteristics.” , according to statements reported to the official Iraqi news agency, INA.
The census, in this sense, does include religion but does not distinguish between sects of Islam, and it will also be interesting to know the number of Yazidis displaced throughout the country after escaping, a decade ago, from the massacres of the jihadist organization Islamic State .
The 1987 census recorded a total of approximately 19 million Iraqis, to which must be added approximately 2.8 million inhabitants in Kurdistan, according to unofficial counts carried out at the time by the region. However, current World Bank estimates now put the total population at 44.5 million people. Iraqi authorities, for their part, believe that the final population after the census will be around 43 million, and anticipate that the country will have 48 million by 2028.
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