Iraq Ministry of planning and
Development Cooperation (MoPDC)
United Nations Population
Fund (UNFPA )

Justifications of Census undertaking
Role of UNFPA
Progress
Challenges
Strategy
Lessons learned

In wars and conflict since 30 years
About 26-32 million inhabitant
Fragile political process
Federal government in Baghdad and regional government in KRG
Control on boarder is fragile
800,000 internally displaced
2-3 million externally displaced
Conflict on controlling some areas
ID system fragile, registers not exist
16 Governorates, 15,000 communities
And 320,000 fieldworkers
Strong leadership for COSIT
Ali Baban Minister
MoPDC
High Political support for IPHC09
President of COSIT,
Chairman, COR
Strongly committed team

DoS
I
TAB -
I
C
MDoF

Legally:
The census should have been launched in 2007- each 10 years
:
Irrelevance of 1997 census
:
Lack of small area statistics for planning
Taking the Risk by International
Organizations is very much
is
placed
IPHC09 is a potential peace making tool
Supporting collective effort is much

Nationally Owned by MoPDC
Nationally led by COSIT
Internationally Supported by UNFPA
Operational Financing is mostly national
Financing TA through UNFPA
Budget cut by 40% after crisis

• UNFPA intervention come in line with Iraq’s NDS 2007-2010
• UNDG established ITF & mandated item C-23 to UNFPA
• The national counterpart at the Iraqi side is COSIT
• Development objective: To facilitate availability of data to help seven out of eight goals of MDGs
• Immediate objectives: to increase capacity of COSIT, to plan,
implement, analyze and disseminate census, and to strengthen the capacity of national partners, to monitor, advocate and communicate census results

• O1: Capacities are increased to plan and implement high quality and internationally recognised population and housing censuses and other large-scale surveys.
• O2: Capacities are enhanced to conduct disaggregated analysis
• O3: Capacities of line Ministries to utilize census data is increased
• O4: Increased compliance of IPHC09 with international standards

UNFPA was keen to approach this project from capacity building point of view intervention forms
• Facilitation for COSIT to reach and conclude the outsourced services and goods
• On-job training of Iraqi census team in different fields
• Technical backstopping to Iraq team in all census stages
• Quality assurance to make sure that outsourced goods and service

Completed
1. June 2008, Council of Ministers Decree to Conduct IPHC
2. October 2008, endorsement by Legislative Council
3. November 3, 2008, presidential decree number (32) of IPHC law number (40) for 2008 published in Official Gazette
4. September 2009 – rescheduling of population counting

Master Plan -
Data collection -
Training Plan -
Security Plan – completed completed completed completed
Data Processing Plan ongoing-80%
Dissemination Plan ongoing-30%
Publicity Campaign – ongoing-50%
Quality control Plan – ongoing -75%
Contingency Plannot completed-30%

Designing Census Tools
Questionnaires-
Manuals-
QC forms-
Classifications-
Testing -
Pilot Census–
Cartography completed completed completed completed completed completed ongoing-70%

Pre-Testing -
Numbering &listing
IT environment completed
Pilot Census– completed
Training of Field Staff ongoing-80% for 1 st stage
98% completed
Re-doing maps
Updating Numbering and Listing
Population counting

Census Politicizing
There is high level of politicizing the census in Iraq.
The direct reason of politicizing comes from the fact that the legislative council (House of Representatives) linked solving a numbering of political problems with the census results. This includes:
1. distribution of wealth (oil revenues)
2. reconciliation conflicting boarders/counties.
Distribution of electoral seats by ethnicity in the mixed counties.

Census Politicizing
Some politicians tried to link the census with elections.
The direct implication appears at three levels:
1. more pressure on COSIT regarding the on census date,
2. more pressure (intervention) on the content of census questionnaires,
3. more quality assurance and anti-fraud measures were requested from COSIT to ensure credibility of the outcomes.

Census Politicizing
The challenges facing COSIT are
1. creating a national consensus on the census date and content
2. launching the census in a freely professional manner.
The risks on the census launching
1. repeated postponement of the fieldwork
2. not endorsing the census results
3. undermine the whole statistical system as a result of more politicizing due to political intervention and allowing non statistical actors to intervene.

Locality Affiliation
For some communities
Population displacement over tim e
Boarder
conflict
Violent opposition

Challenge
Strategies
1. Fragile Security Situation •
CB-Remote transfer of know-how
•
S-S technical cooperation
•
Gradual safe landing: step by step
•
Move ahead cautiously
2. Potential fraud counting, processing (double counting, out-scope, inclusion, miscoding, etc)
3. Census endorsement
• Finger print
• Curfew system
• Mixed Teams
• CIMoC
•
ITAB-IC
•
CIMoC
•
Involvement of civil society

Fragility is not exception any more
Census could be peacemaking tool
Communication strategy is key
International support is very important
Investment in training is a wise strategy
Argumentation with political level is important