Bosnia’s population shrank by nearly a quarter in 25 years

SARAJEVO, Bosnia – Authorities said Thursday Bosnia’s population shrank by nearly a quarter over the past 25 years, a period marked by the devastating 1992-95 war that took 100,000 lives and turned almost half of the population into refugees either within the country or abroad.

The results of the 2013 census were published a day after the legal deadline because Bosnian Serbs disagreed with the EU-recommended counting methodology that was applied. According to the results, 3.5 million people live in the country, compared with the nearly 4.4 million counted in 1991. Half of the population, or 50.11 per cent, are Muslim Bosniaks, 15.43 per cent are Roman Catholic Croats and 30.78 per cent are Christian Orthodox Serbs, the report said. In 1991 the population consisted of 43.47 per cent of Bosniaks, 17.38 per cent Croats and 31.21 per cent of Serbs. The rest were minorities.

The worst conflict in Europe since World War II divided once ethnically mixed Bosnia along new ethnic lines and forced many people to flee to areas controlled by the armed forces of their own ethnic group. The country now consists of two semi-autonomous regions, linked by a joint government, a three-member presidency and a parliament.

Although the ethnic cleansing was most severe in the Bosnian Serb half of the country, post-war refugee return brought the percentage of Bosniaks there from nearly zero in 1995 to 13.99 per cent and the Croat population to 2.41 per cent.

However, in the other half, where political power is shared equally between 70.4 per cent of Bosniaks and 22.4 Croats, the number of Serbs was reduced to 3.6 per cent of the population.

The Bosniak-Croat part has nearly twice as many residents as the Serb part.

Bosnia’s capital of Sarajevo is the biggest city in the country and has 275,524 residents.