Statistics claiming to have come from the United Nations have circulated online, claiming that there is apparently a population of 2.2 billion men and 5.6 billion women in the world, and a total of 7.8 billion people. This report was initially published on a Nigerian-based news website known as Independent and has been shared across various social media platforms including Instagram and Twitter.
Background
Piga Firimbi has previously looked into claims involving the UN. This includes a UN vehicle used by Ethiopian President Abiy Ahmed to campaign ahead of the country’s general elections and a fake job advert claiming to have come from UNICEF.
On matters population, the Kenyan population for instance is majorly comprised of women, who according to the 2019 census are 500,000 more in number than men.
Verification
Piga Firimbi found that the article published by the Independent website was posted on October 7, 2019. The same article is attached to social media posts published recently. In the same light, this claim happens to have been debunked at least three times in the past.
After running a data query of the world’s population on the UN website, results of the male to female population greatly differed from the figures given by the Independent website. This revealed that the male and female population globally is almost equal. The 2019 UN results state that there were 7,713,468 people in the world, 3,824,434 women and there were in fact more men at a population of 3,889,035. (see screengrab below)
Additionally, a fact-check published by AFP Fact Check in June 2019 quotes a UN official who said that contrary to the posts claiming that the fake report is from a “UN 1st quarter Demography Report 2019”, the UN does not have a report with this title, and it does not release demographic data on a quarterly basis.
Verdict
Posts claiming that a UN demographic report indicates that there are 2.2 billion men and 5.6 billion women in the world are FALSE.
This story was produced by Africa Uncensored in partnership with Code for Africa with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie.
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