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As early as 1999, I had the incredible chance to supervise a large-scale survey in Kosovo for the UNFPA and the IOM , right after the war. For the first time in thirty years, the population of Kosovo accepted to respond to a survey which covered demographic and socioeconomic questions. After the data collection, I supervised the data entry in Pristina to come back to The Demographic Institute of Bordeaux, in France to spend more than one year on the data analysis. This experience was fascinating, and this is when I knew that I would flourish in an academic environment but that I had, at the same time, the "bug" of the field.
The subsequent years were followed by a mission in Macedonia, and a couple of years after, I was part of the core team for the preparation and monitoring missions for the 2005 Trial Census in Nigeria, and the 2006 Census in Nigeria. At this time, I developed a unique tool to obverse and monitor censuses that is a reference when it comes to census evaluation. This unique tool is indeed the most complete and systematically used by the UNFPA for census' monitoring and evaluation.
I am glad that I can put my unique expertise at the disposal of developing countries where my experience and technical support have saved several censuses, and touched the lives of hundreds of millions people in countries where freedom, population policies and population programmes lacked the most: this is my community engagement: making sure that people are counted, that vulnerable populations are taken into account and that availability of data improves their freedom, access to basic rights and ultimately their lives.
In 2008, my experience in census support and evaluation was again required, and it is with a lot of humility and enthusiasm that I trained, organised and supervised a team of more than 80 national and international monitors, to produce more than 45 regional and national technical research reports. This census was a pre-requisite for the scission of the two Sudan, and for the organisations of elections.
In 2010, I became the Census Specialist for the 2010 Census round at the UNFPA HQ. Not only I had to respond to technical and research questions for numerous countries, but again, I helped for field questions for the upcoming census in Afghanistan and for the census in Ghana, supervising the 2010 census in-country, for instance.
In Myanmar, in 2012, I had the chance to develop their publicity, advocacy and education census campaign to make sure the message were well disseminated and understood after thirty years without any data collection. Females and vulnerable populations had to be correctly counted. My support then transformed into organisation and supervision of the evaluation and monitoring mission for the census 2014, where I had to chance to bring six Post-Graduate students from the department as census observers among a team of 80 national and international monitors. During that time, I refined the tools I designed few years before to produce a high-quality final report (and regional reports) that helped the census to be accepted by all: this census was the first legal step in organising the first democratic elections...
From 2014 to 2017, I was part of the International Technical Advisory Board for the Census in Myanmar (UNFPA).
https://myanmar.unfpa.org/en/itab-member-8
The mission in East Timor, offered me the chance to developed, as senior census specialist, the communication campaign and to offer the country a tailor-made publicity and education programme.
Finally, in 2017, I was requested by the Government of Pakistan to support the 5th Population and housing Census, after nineteen years without headcount. After careful, considerations due to the numerous technical, political and security challenges, I decided to accept to join the UNFPA and the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics as Chief Technical Adviser.
It is not without challenges that I managed to successfully contribute to a census that people were giving for a failure: in fact, it has been a success. From preparation, data collection, data monitoring to data entry and data analysis, I have put all my knowledge, dedication and energy in this project.
I am glad to have made a difference in the life of females of Pakistan making sure they are counted, as well as counting of refugees.
In this case again, the census was a pre-requisite to the 2018 democratic general elections.
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