May 10, 2006 (Juba) – Governors of the ten southern Sudan states meeting in Juba have reiterated the need for a population and housing census in Sudan.

The governors on Monday called for the census-only the 5th in Sudan’s history - to be carried out as soon as November this year.

The traditional objective of a census is to count the total number of people in the country, thus providing baseline information for development planning and policy-making. 

Vice President in the Government of Southern Sudan, Dr. Riek Machar, says under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement mandate, the census results will be used for political purposes as well.  He stressed that for its results to be useful, the census must be credible, objective and acceptable to all stakeholders in the country.  He underlined that the census should be conducted transparently to produce credible results regardless of the objective of the exercise.

The Vice President said that southern Sudan would have a separate census committee at the state level to be supported by the Government of Southern Sudan and the United Nations.  Machar called on the ten southern states' governors to urge internally displaced southern Sudanese living in the north to return to their homes in the south before the expected census.

The United States Census Bureau and several partners are offering technical assistance to Sudan’s census efforts.