Iraq’s 1987 census stamp depicts rural and urban workers beside a line graph showing a population count. The census commemorated by the stamp formed part of the process preceding the Anfal campaign against Iraqi Kurds, according to the account of the stamp’s history.
Human Rights Watch said that “the machinery of genocide was set in motion” against Iraqi Kurds in March 1987. The stamp records how a public count could mean more than the figures it displayed: it also reflects how population counts can document who is wanted and who isn’t.
Fadah Jassem examines the stamp in a study of 38 entries from 14 Middle Eastern and North African countries. The stamps date from 1940 to 2015, drawing on a collection Julie Peasley assembled for the Data Visualisation Society’s Nightingale magazine. Peasley’s collection includes 180 stamps from 88 countries.
Censuses and state records
Census stamps feature often in the database. Many Middle Eastern countries marked population counts with special stamps as populations grew and governments took on the work of tracking them. The examples show how designers paired population figures with images of families, workers, maps and charts.
Egypt’s 1976 population and housing census stamp sets a cityscape against a turquoise background, with figures and a grid marked with years and numbers. President Anwar Sadat introduced his infitah, or “open-door” policy, in 1974 to attract Arab and foreign investment; the stamp appeared during that period. Its design reflected Egypt’s changing economic direction and ambition to modernise.
Kuwait’s 1965 census stamp shows a family of four in traditional dress beside a pink outline of the country, below a rising line chart. Issued four years after independence in 1961, it marked a period of rapid change. Kuwait’s population had more than doubled since 1957, reaching about 467,000 by 1965, and non-Kuwaitis made up slightly more than half of residents. Oil, migration and the building of a modern state form the wider context for the stamp’s imagery.
The UAE’s 1980 population census stamp depicts a family in traditional dress against a pink grid. The country was less than a decade old, and the count followed its first general census in 1975. Abu Dhabi’s population more than doubled between the two counts, from about 212,000 to 452,000.
Charts of growth and public health
Other stamps used graphs to depict economic change or public campaigns. Egypt issued a stamp in 2003 to mark 100 years of the Egyptian stock exchange, established in 1903. A rising graph and sweeping curved arrow create a colourful depiction of movement, fluctuation and forward momentum.
Qatar marked the Mena Economic Conference of 1997 with an artistic line chart. The conference took place in Doha in November 1997, part of a series launched after the Oslo Accords amid hopes that closer economic ties would support regional peace. The stamp’s optimism contrasted with a more complicated political moment.
A UAE stamp issued in 1987 as part of Unicef’s Child Survival Campaign carries the words “Growth Monitoring” in Arabic and English. It reflected a major public-health effort of the 1980s. Unicef promoted regular growth monitoring, breastfeeding, immunisation and oral rehydration therapy as simple, affordable ways to help children survive their early years. Growth charts still track children’s development and identify when they might need help.
Sudan’s World Statistics Day stamp from 2015 features colourful triangles and circles alongside the phrase “Better Data, Better Lives.” That year, the UN adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, setting targets on poverty, health, education and other areas. Reliable statistics were essential to measuring countries’ positions and progress, and the stamp carried that year’s World Statistics Day theme into its design.