Osmanović with Everers and Wigemark: Overcoming the Stalemate in Publishing Census Results

Minister of Civil Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina Adil Osmanović spoke today in Sarajevo with the Director of the Statistical Office of the European Commission (EUROSTAT) Pieter Everaers and the Head of the Delegation of the European Union to BiH, Lars-Gunnar Wigemark, reports the Bosnian news agency Patria.

The discussion focused on the census of population, households and dwellings conducted in 2013, and it was assessed that certain progress has been made in overcoming problems related to the completion of the census and the publication of results (the director and deputy director of the Agency for Statistics of BiH have been appointed), but that additional efforts are needed to proceed with the final publication of census results in accordance with the Law on the Census of Population, Households and Dwellings in Bosnia and Herzegovina of 2013.

Minister Adil Osmanović informed his interlocutors that data processing is currently delayed due to disagreements among statistical institutions on methodological issues, which could jeopardize the entire census operation. He stated that a Unified Data Processing Program, developed in accordance with the Law on the Census of Population, Households and Dwellings in Bosnia and Herzegovina of 2013 and aligned with European standards, which would be accepted by the Agency for Statistics of BiH, the Federal Office of Statistics of the Federation of BiH, and the Republika Srpska Institute of Statistics, could unlock the current stalemate towards publishing the final census results.

The meeting concluded that the census issue should be a matter of expertise, not politics, and that it should be addressed as a priority in accordance with the Law on the Census of Population, Households and Dwellings in Bosnia and Herzegovina of 2013 and the recommendations of the Management Group of the International Monitoring Operation for the Census of Population and Households (IMO).

The census of population, households and dwellings in BiH was held from October 1 to 15, 2013, and official data have not been published to this day. So far, only preliminary results on the total number of inhabitants of BiH have been published, showing that 3,791,662 persons were enumerated in BiH, of which 2,371,603 in the Federation of BiH, 1,326,991 in Republika Srpska, and 93,028 in the Brčko District.