View on Poverty: Mapping populations in insecure states - SciDev.Net
▻http://www.scidev.net/global/data/analysis-blog/view-poverty-mapping-populations-insecure-states.html#sthash.MWm1m24f.dpuf
More than 30 years after the last attempt, Afghanistan is conducting a nationwide demographic survey. Findings from households in Kabul, the fourth of the country’s 34 provinces to be assessed, were published last month. [1,2]
The last time there was a similar endeavour was 1979, when Afghanistan’s first — and so far only — census was left incomplete after the Soviet invasion. In the absence of up-to-date population surveys, that fragmentary and antiquated dataset has often been the go-to information on which government and aid agencies base development programmes.
Yet this looks set to change, says Mercedita Tia, census technical specialist at the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) office in Kabul. For the past three years and with UNFPA support, Afghanistan’s Central Statistics Organization has been running the Socio-Demographic and Economic Survey (SDES), a nationwide household data survey due for completion in 2018.