Bosnia and Herzegovina 2014
Yearbook 2014
Bosnia and Herzegovina. The worst unrest since the 1992-95 war shook Bosnia and Herzegovina in February. The unrest began in Tuzla, where workers protested against the privatization of state-owned enterprises. Concerns about layoffs and closure of factories were high in the country, with unemployment at 44%. The protests spread to the capital Sarajevo and several other cities and expressed dissatisfaction with the political stalemate and lousy economy in general. Government buildings were set on fire and hundreds of people were injured in connection with the unrest.
Bosnia and Herzegovina population in 2020 is estimated at 3,280,830. Violent torrents in May caused a natural disaster. As much rain fell in a couple of days as it normally does in three months with flooded rivers and landslides as a result, mainly in Bosnia and Herzegovina and neighboring Serbia. The floods were the worst since statistics began in the late 1800s.
The northeastern part of Bosnia and Herzegovina was particularly hard hit. Around 25 people were killed, hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes and every fourth inhabitant of the country was left without access to clean water. The material damage was compared to those who hit the country during the civil war. Great concern arose that many of the more than 100,000 landmines that remained in just over 9,000 minefields after the war were now being washed out.
Many testified to a positive side effect of the disaster, when Bosnians worked to help and save each other regardless of ethnic background.
According to topb2bwebsites, when Bosnia and Herzegovina first participated in a soccer World Cup in June in Brazil, many also saw it as a symbolically important step towards increased national unity. In the team were representatives of all three large groups of people.
Prior to the October elections, however, there was not much that pointed to reduced fragmentation and greater integration. Nationalist parties and nationalist candidates essentially won, as in previous elections, both at the national level and in both regions.
In the election of the national three-term presidency, Bakir Izetbegović, who belonged to the Bosnian Nationalist SDA (Democratic Party), was re-elected for a second term. The Croatians appointed Dragan Čović from the Croatian nationalist HDZ BiH (Croatian Democratic Union in Bosnia and Herzegovina with partners). The Serbs narrowly elected Mladen Ivanić, who belonged to the PDP, a conservative opposition party in the Serbian Republic.
In the State House of Representatives, the SDA became the largest with ten seats, while the two Serbian parties SDS (Serbian Democratic Party) and SNSD (Independent Social Democrats Party) together received eleven seats. The newly formed DF (Democratic Front) received five seats. The DF, founded by former Croatian Presidential Councilor Željko Komšić, advocates cooperation across ethnic divides. In November, SDA, DF and HDZ BiH agreed to jointly form government, both at the national level and in the Bosnian-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the national level, support was needed by another party, while the three were expected to form government on their own in the federation.
In the Serbian Republic, Milorad Dodik was re-elected president and his party SNSD remained the largest despite reduced support.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Republic formerly belonging to Yugoslavia, proclaimed independent in 1992. It is formed by the two physical and historical regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- Geographical-political aspects
Under the Dayton Agreements (1995), the state has retained the territory formerly belonging to the Yugoslav Federal Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but has been divided into two distinct entities: the Serbian Republic (Republika Srpska) and the Croatian-Muslim Federation (Federacija Bosne i Hercegovine), with 49% and 51% of the territory respectively.
The Serbian Republic, with a very irregular shape, includes the northernmost (bordering Croatia) and easternmost (adjacent to Serbia and Montenegro) regions.), whose continuity is interrupted to the North by the district of Brčko which, disputed between the two federated entities, is governed directly by the international administration. The Croatian-Muslim Federation is overall more compact, but has two exclaves in the North and a greater ethnic fragmentation: of the ten cantons into which it is divided, five are Bosnian majority, three Croatian majority and two mixed. The division into two federated entities aims to reflect the territorial distribution of the different ethnic groups; but this is an almost illusory objective, in a country that has always been a melting pot of different peoples and continues to be so even after the tragic operations of ‘ ethnic cleansing ‘; even in the most ethnically homogeneous areas there are still several enclaves of other ethnic groups. The capital Sarajevo also hosts the political bodies of the Croatian-Muslim entity, while those of the Serbian entity (de facto semi-independent) have established their headquarters first in Pale, then in Banja Luka.
The Bosnia and Herzegovina has a modest outlet to the sea, guaranteed by a corridor, about twenty kilometers wide, which reaches the coast at Neum, to the South of the mouth of the Narenta, between two stretches of Croatian territory and facing the Croatian peninsula of Pelješac.
- Population
In 2005, according to United Nations estimates, the residents were about 600,000 fewer than those recorded at the 1991 census. The demographic decline is a consequence of the long civil war, which caused about 300,000 victims and the exodus, partly temporary in definitive part (with the formation of large groups of refugees in Serbia and Croatia), of about 1,900,000 people. The current population is estimated at around 3,752,000 residents and the natural growth rate is now negative (-2%). Massive internal movements were directed towards urban centers, which overall host almost half of the population; the urban dimensions are rather modest, with the exception of Sarajevo (in 2009 the population of the canton of Sarajevo was estimated at 423,645 residents) and Banja Luka.
44% of the residents are Bosnians (already registered as Muslims: a name that, already at the time of the former Yugoslavia, transcended the religious meaning to assume that of real nationality), 31% from Serbs, 17% from Croats and the rest from various groups, among which the most consistent is that of the Montenegrins. The ubiquitous diffusion of Serbo-Croatian, spoken mainly in its Bosnian variety, ensures substantial linguistic unity. The percentages relating to nationalities are also indicative of the composition of the population by religion: the Bosnians are almost all of the Sunni Islamic faith, the Serbs are Orthodox Christian and the Croats are absolutely Catholic (18%).
- Economic conditions
In the context of the old Yugoslavia, the then Federated Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was slowly transforming itself from a rural country into a country with industries (metallurgy), the birth of which was linked to the resources of the subsoil (coal, lignite, metal ores). The war has upset or destroyed its economic-territorial fabric, in particular its infrastructures. The country’s economy still depends – for survival and reconstruction – on foreign subsidies, mostly provided by the EU (about 8% of GDP in 2004), but the institutional and productive conditions of the country are improving. and the resumption of suspended or annihilated activities in wartime has resulted in intense economic growth and the reduction of inflation. The slow re-establishment of viable economic conditions is accompanied by the gradual rise in the average income per resident, which had collapsed to very low levels; the unemployment rate, however, exceeds 27%, industrial production (engineering, chemicals, electronics, wood) is still far from pre-war levels and consumption is excessively low: values, all particularly negative in the areas included in the Serbian entity. However, two circumstances should be pointed out which partially mitigate the seriousness of the picture: a substantial share of the economy is located in an informal context and therefore escapes statistical accounting, but acts to support the population; the social and human development indicators, consolidated at the time of belonging to Yugoslavia.
