Ahmed Kudhaer Hussain
During the last decade, Iraq recorded a population increase of about 9 million people, and according to the statistics of the global economy for 2020, Iraq ranks 36th in the world in terms of population, and the fourth among Arab countries, as the annual growth rate of the population indicates (2.30%) for the year 2020 and accordingly, the population has multiplied many times; Due to the high fertility rates, which reached (3.60%) births per woman in 2020, and despite the decrease in this rate compared to 2012, which amounted to (4,24) births per woman, the fertility rate in Iraq is still high with (2.63%) births per woman.
With the high rates of population growth that Iraq has been witnessing for 10 years, and the decline in the levels of the economy and development, and the accompanying poor services and security disturbances, the need to activate policies that determine the birth and regulate the population increase, and the experiences of some countries have confirmed that reducing the speed of population growth has led to an increase in the ability of these countries to address poverty and its problems, and here the question arises: Can those experiences in regulating the population increase be replicated in Indonesia, Iran, and Tunisia, then mimic the same experience in Iraq, or is it at least proposing a policy or strategy to limit the worsening of the population growth in Iraq?
