ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Iraq’s electoral commission announced early Thursday that it has launched an application form for the creation of the “Basra Region,” giving an organization its approval to collect two percent of the province’s voters to activate constitutional procedures.

Haider Mohammed, head of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) in Basra, told state media that "the commission has provided forms to collect signatures from two percent of Basra province’s voters," adding that "after verification, and if the signatures are found to be valid, registration centers will be opened to receive applications from the remaining ten percent of voters."

Separately on Thursday, the Basriatha Federal Culture Organization told The New Region that it had received approval from IHEC to collect the signatures of two percent of Basra's population, as the initial step to start the constitutional procedures to form the region. 

Article 119 of the Iraqi constitution stipulates that one or more Iraqi provinces "shall have the right to organize into a region based on a request to be voted on in a referendum," after requesting the initiation of the procedure in one of two ways; either through a vote by ten percent of the population, or a request filed by one third of the provincial council, with the former requiring an initial petition by at least two percent of the province to carry out the process.

"After verifying the validity of the applications, a request will be submitted to the Council of Ministers to set a date for the referendum on the formation of the Basra region," state media quoted Mohammed as saying. 

He added that the commission will announce the request within three days, followed by the launch of a one-month period for eligible voters to sign a "designated register, thus completing the legally required 10 percent threshold to proceed to the referendum stage."

A Basra region has long been in the making, according to Basriatha Director Ammar Sarhan, who said that the movement has lasted more than ten years, before submitting an official request to the Iraqi elections body and "following it up for more than three months, until the approval was obtained." 

The Kurdistan Region is currently the only autonomous region in federal Iraq. The Region's authorities, however, have repeatedly criticized Baghdad for not adhering to the constitution in their implementation of a federal model.

Officially recognized in 2005 in the Iraqi Constitution, the Kurdistan Region's provinces lead Iraq in several quality of life metrics.