The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has issued a strong rebuttal following the recent publication of a national poverty report that included data sourced from the Kurdistan region. Officials argue that the report was released without prior consent, raising serious concerns over data ownership and the integrity of the findings. According to the KRG’s Ministry of Planning, the unilateral dissemination of this information has not only breached established protocols but also misrepresented the region’s socioeconomic realities.

Key points highlighted by the KRG include:

  • Unauthorized use of official surveys conducted exclusively by KRG agencies
  • Discrepancies in poverty estimates compared to locally verified statistics
  • Lack of stakeholder collaboration in data verification and interpretation

To illustrate these…