Bosnia to Publish Census Without Serb Agreement

Illustration: Anadolu.

Bosnia’s State Statistical Agency is set on Thursday to release the complete results of the first census of its population, which was conducted in 2013, and whose publication has been delayed by disagreements with the statistical institute of Republika Srpska, RS, Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity.

“The decision to publish the data has been taken following the law on census and the international standards,” Mirsada Adembegovic, the spokesperson of the State Statistical Agency, told BIRN.

She maintained that the decision to publish the complete results was taken without any pressure from political parties.

“Statistical agencies are scientific bodies and are totally independent from political parties,” Adembegovic said, assuring that the state agency “won’t make a circus out of this presentation.

“Our only concern is to finally give these data to the Bosnian public,” she concluded.

Publication of the complete results of the 2013 census has been repeatedly delayed by methodological disagreements between the Statistical Institute of the RS and the other two agencies, at the State level and in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia’s other entity.

After months of fruitless negotiations, the State Statistical Agency decided last month to publish autonomously the results, without first reaching an agreement with the RS statistical institute.

The director of the Statistical Agency, Velimir Jukic, said that all non-permanent Bosnian residents – those who were absent for 12 months prior to or after the census – will be included in the number of residents of the country, a view which is strongly opposed by the RS.

Estimates of the total number of non-permanent residents which should be included in Bosnia’s resident population have varied during the past months from 196,000 up to 430,000, although Adembegovic declined to provide BIRN with detailed information on this.

Authorities in the RS strongly oppose the decision to publishing the census results without an agreed methodology.

On Wednesday, the leader of the Serbian Democratic Party, SDS, Mladen Bosic, filed a complain to the Bosnian Constitutional Court, asking it to declare Jukic’s decision unconstitutional.

Last week, the Assembly of the RS called the authorities of the entity to prepare a draft law on the census, which would allow RS to publish the results of the census according to its own methodology.

“The decision to publish the results of the census further complicates the situation in Bosnia,” Milorad Dodik, the President of RS, told the media on Tuesday, noting that the RS will not recognise these results.

“Do as you please in Bosnia … we want to build up Republika Srpska anyway,” Dodik said.