Iraq: COVID, elections and lack of funding postpones first comprehensive census since 1987

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Plans to conduct the first comprehensive population census in Iraq in decades have been postponed yet again in light of the outbreak of the coronavirus, as well as upcoming elections in October, the same month in which the census was supposed to take place.

The long-delayed census aimed to include Iraqis living abroad and those who had been forced to flee within the country during seven years of war and violence.

The Al-Sabah newspaper quoted the spokesperson for the Iraqi Ministry of Planning, Abdul Zahra al-Hindawi, as saying the census was postponed due to "the coronavirus pandemic and the curfew."

“The 2021 budget did not include any financial allocations for the census. The elections are scheduled to take place next October, which again postponed the census,” Hindawi added.

Al-Hindawi said that the census is supposed to be "electronic and not paper," and continued, "Therefore, what is required is the provision of an integrated electronic environment."

The census has been postponed on many occasions due to fears of its politicization. The Kurdistan Region is one of the supporters of the census, albeit with reservations about its mechanisms.

The autonomous region wants numbers for its own population, which will determine its share in the federal budget, which currently stands at 12.67 percent after it was reduced from 17 percent.

According to the last census, conducted in 1997, the population of Iraq was roughly 19 million. That census did not include the Kurdistan Region, whose population was estimated to be around three million. The postponed survey was to be the first to include the region since 1987.

Editing by Joanne Stocker-Kelly