Since August 2010 the UNFPA Iraq Country Office has been supporting nine staff of the Iraqi Central Statistical Organization (CSO) and Kurdistan Regional Statistical Office (KRSO) to get their Master’s and PhD degrees in Demography and Statistics from the Institute of Statistical Studies and Research (ISSR) of Cairo University in Egypt. The programme they were enrolled in consisted of two to four years of study.
The first group of six students have completed their theses and were able to successfully defend their dissertations, officially making them graduates with Master’s degrees in Demography and Statistics. Their theses revolved around topics like Developing Human Development Statistical Indicators in Iraq, implementing the modules and measures for poverty measuring in Iraq, and econometrics and applied economics. The remaining three students started their programme at the end of 2011 and are due to finish their studies in 2013-2014.
UNFPA is supporting the scholarship programme as part of its capacity building activities under the Census and Large Scale Surveys project to enhance statistical capacities in Iraq.
