Sudan decrees next Tuesday official holiday for census
April 10, 2008 (KHARTOUM) — Secretariat of the Council of Ministers today announced that Tuesday, April 15, 2008 an official holiday throughout the country to implement the fifth Sudan Population and Housing Census.
The census enumeration will be conducted for two weeks from 15 to 30 April 2008, despite the opposition of Darfur former rebel movements and other non signatory groups.
The secretary also announced a ban on the movement of means of transportation between the cities of the country during that day in order to ensure the participation of all citizens in the census.
Since independence of Sudan in 1956, the Government has conducted four censuses in 1956, 1973, 1983 and 1993.
Sudan has recently come out of two decades of civil war. A Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Government of Sudan and Sudanese People Liberation Movement (SPLM) was signed in January 2005.
The population censuses are normally conducted after 10 years. The census in Sudan was, therefore, due in the year 2003. However, the conduct of the census was postponed based on positive expectations of peace agreement.
Thus Sudan’s population census is now overdue not only because it is needed to generate data for socio-economic development planning but also as a tool for sustainability of peace as called upon by the recently signed CPA.
The fifth census had been planned to take place in November 2007, but due to financial and technical difficulties it was agreed to hold it this month.
The 2008 census will be conducted through the traditional approach. It will be a de facto census and will count all persons who spent census night in Sudan. This will mean nationals and foreigners alike whether in households, institutions, nomadic settlements, homeless, refugees and displaced camps etc, so long as they spent census night in Sudan would be enumerated.
(ST)