03 Feb 11

Hopes Fade For Census in Bosnia in 2011

Even if the long-delayed law on a census is adopted fairly soon, it will still be difficult to organise the head count before late autumn this year. 

Zdravko Ljubas
Sarajevo

Bosnia and Herzegovina looks unlikely to have a census this year, unless the country's parliament can speedily approve a new law on the subject.

The director of the Agency for Statistics of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Zdenko Milinovic, said the main obstacle remains "the lack of law on census," and it is already too late to hold one in April, as was planned.

"If the law were adopted soon, the census could theoretically be conducted in October or November this year," Milinovic told Balkan Insight.

He recalled the importance of the census as a source of valid figures about the country and as the "main ground for other precise statistical research". It was also important as a source of reliable information for foreign investors. The European Union has made it clear it wishes to see a census conducted as soon as possible.

A law on the census passed the first instance of regular parliamentary procedure last year but needs further approval by the parliament's House of Peoples to become valid.

The draft law remains at the top of the agenda for the new House of Peoples, expected to be formed as soon as the political parties in Bosnia agree on how to share power following the general election last October.

If the draft law is turned down, the entire procedure will have to start from the beginning and, according to Milinovic, chances would then be minimal of a census taking place in 2011.

Once the law is passed, he said, Bosnia's finance bodies will have a month to find ways to finance the census, which will involve more than 25,000 staff and is estimated to cost some 42 million convertible marks [near 21 million euro].

"Before the real census is conducted, we also need to conduct a test one. If the law is passed sometime soon, we could organize a test census in June and proceed with the real census in October or November," Milinovic said.

The Statistical Office of the European Commission, Eurostat, whose experts recently visited Bosnia, according to Milinovic, should soon send new evaluations on how fast the census can be organized and conducted once all the legislative conditions are met.

The last census in Bosnia took place in 1991, a year before the country declared independence from Yugoslavia and a year before the 1992-95 war in which more than half of some 4 million people were forcible displaced and some 100,000 killed.

In spite of the importance of the census to provide valuable information on population and households in the country after the massive forced movements of the 1990s, the political parties have not been able to agree on it for years, arguing mostly about questions in the census concerning ethnicity, religion and language.

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