Page 227 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 2

IPS224 Jean-Michel Durr
population, just above 140 million, and on the distribution of state population
[6].
Kenya is an interesting case of politico-judicial interference in the census
process. During tabulation of the 2009 census, it became clear to Kenyan
population specialists that the population figures were higher than expected
1
in eight counties in the North Eastern Province. Due to failure of the post
enumeration survey in this region, the problem was unfortunately not
detected earlier. During the official release of the census results in 2010, the
Minister for Planning, National Development and Vision 2030 nullified the
census results in these eight counties and announced a recount of the area to
obtain more accurate population data. The recount was barred by the High
Court after members of parliament from the area filed a case. The judge in the
case decided that the actual enumerated data were the official figures and
should form the basis for further analysis. This had serious consequences for
the subsequent use of census data.
According to Goble [7], Turkmenistan’s Government did not release the
results of the 2012 Census that seems to have revealed that the actual
population was far less than official claims and the ethnic composition too
differed from that expected by the Government.
Data on religion of the census 2011 of India were released only in August
2015. Observers, both within and outside India, alleged that the 2011 Census
data on religion were not released due to electoral considerations [8].

Confidentiality
Strict confidentiality safeguards are needed to protect census data from
political interference. It has happened that government officials, or political
parties request or exert pressures on the Statistical Office to access to
individual census forms or records. In Montenegro, the Director General of the
Statistical Office faced a lawsuit because it refused to grant access to census
forms to a political party. Fortunately, the Court ruled in favour of the Director
of the Statistical Office. However, it shows the lack of respect of statistical
confidentiality that some politicians display, but also the difficulty to educate
people that a population census is a strictly statistical operation, and not an
administrative one.

3. How to maintain the census away from political or undue
government interference?
The UN Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing
Censuses [9] highlight the importance that national statistical/census agencies

1 Lagdera, Wajir East, Mandera Central, Mandera East, Mandera West, Turkana Central,
Turkana North and Turkana South.
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