Macedonian Population Census Planned for October

The census, which was originally planned for April, was postponed ahead of an early general election in June, amid increased political and ethnic tension surrounding the logistics of a census.

In December, Macedonia’s two main ethnic Albanian opposition parties, the New Democracy and the Democratic Party of Albanians, announced that they would boycott the census unless it was postponed from April to July.

They said they feared that the census would be abused in order to report that a lower number of Albanians were living in the country than was actually the case. They argued that the census should be conducted during the summer because Albanians who were working abroad would have returned to their homes in Macedonia and could then be counted.

In February, Albanian and Turkish members of the Census Commission added to tensions when they walked out of one of the census planning sessions in protest over the way census forms would be collected.

They expressed dissatisfaction about the way the ethnic Macedonian majority in the commission had elected census-takers and complained about an absence of Turks and Albanians among census-takers in areas where these nationalities are dominant.

Vesna Janevska, the head of the Macedonian Census Commission, said the path was now clear for the census to take place in October. “All technical and political obstacles for the census have been removed”.

By conducting the head count this year, she added that Macedonia would have fulfilled recommendations from Eurostat, the EU’s joint statistical office, to organize a head count once every ten years.

Population censuses are important because they provide a precise economic and social picture of a country. As well as showing the number of people living in a country, they reveal basic demographic, ethnic, educational and economic information. Foreign investment in countries often relies heavily on up-to-date information provided in such censuses.

Macedonia’s last population census took place in 2002, one year after the signing of the 2001 Ohrid Peace Accord, which ended a short-lived armed conflict in the country between ethnic Albanian insurgents and the security forces.

The results of the census showed that 64.2 per cent of the population was Macedonian and 25.2 per cent were ethnic Albanian. Roma, Turks, Serbs and other minorities made up the rest.

The new census paper questionnaire contains blank spot where the citizens can voluntarily write their nationality.