Population grows to 19.7 million

Yemen has announced that the population of the country has reached 19.7 million contrary to all estimates, following completion of a new census. At a ceremony in the capital, Sana, last week, Yemen's prime minister, Abdulqader Bajamal, said the December 2004 Population, Housing and Establishments Census showed the population consisted of 9,705,506 females and 10,016,137 males. He pointed out that the results meant that the population growth rate had fallen to 3.2 percent from 3.7. The Yemeni official also praised the achievements of his government, saying that the results show unemployment is down from 33 percent to 18 percent in 2004. However, at the ceremony, Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, stressed the urgency for the need to bring the population growth rate in Yemen under control. "We very badly need family planning which has very much to do with development. We call on the media, clerics and intellectuals to continue raising awareness towards family planning." More than 23,000 enumerators took part in the counting process between December and February, in Yemen's first census for a decade. Experts say the ever-increasing population in the country is worrying. It is estimated that by 2016 there will be more than 29 million people in the country and more than 35 million by 2025, putting a huge strain on resources. Officials acknowledge that population growth remains a challenge for Yemen, one of the poorest countries of the world. "If we take into consideration the limited resources in Yemen plus the 1.7 million expatriates living outside Yemen, the number remains a challenge and puts the Yemeni government to the test. The growing population is exhausting the country's meagre natural resources, especially water," Anwar al-Ashwal, media director of the census project, told IRIN in Sana. "The growth rate is still higher than Yemen's resources can afford. This in turn will affect the living standards of individuals and families. If this growth is not met with sustainable policies, the available resources will be eroded by the growing population and the geographically scattered areas nationwide," he added. He pointed out that the growth rate reduction was a good sign of growing national awareness of the danger of a population explosion. Yemen has one of the highest population growth rates in the world. "The number is still big for Yemen compared to resources, although we were expecting the number to range between 19 and 20 million; Yemen has very limited resources. We have to improve the resources and reduce poverty, otherwise we will face a big problem," Abdu Said, team leader of the poverty unit at the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) told IRIN. "The economic growth which is estimated at 3.2 is still lower than the population growth," he added. With regards to reliability and efficiency of data collection for the census, Said said: "It was far better than the census of the 1994 because of the new advanced technology used in collecting the data." While the government of Yemen has largely funded the census at a cost of more than US$1 million, there were grants in kind such as equipment, preliminary surveys and training from foreign donors including United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The World Bank and the Social Fund for Development (SFD) also proposed input, requesting the inclusion of certain fields for new information. The SFD was formed as an autonomous agency with financial and administrative independence, governed by a board of directors, representing the government, NGOs and the private sector under the chairmanship of the prime minister. Around 23,000 enumerators, 20 percent of whom were female carried out the door-to-door census. They had to visit and interview every household as it was not possible to collect information through questionnaires because over half the population is illiterate. According to the World Bank's reports, over 42 percent of the 19.7 million population live below the poverty line receiving less than US$2 a day. Literacy is estimated at 50 percent and unemployment at over 20 percent. International organisations consider Yemen to be one of the 30 least developed nations in the world. It was ranked 133 out of 162 countries, according to the UN Human Development Report for 2001.