{"id":2548,"date":"2013-11-24T12:13:11","date_gmt":"2013-11-24T12:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zastone.ba\/?p=2548"},"modified":"2013-12-06T12:16:28","modified_gmt":"2013-12-06T12:16:28","slug":"civic-monitoring-group-raises-concerns-about-bosnias-first-post-war-census","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zastone.ba\/en\/civic-monitoring-group-raises-concerns-about-bosnias-first-post-war-census\/","title":{"rendered":"Civic Monitoring Group Raises Concerns About Bosnia’s First Post-War Census"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"akcijaA census usually tells a country what it looks like and how it has changed but in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country still simmering with divisions amongst its ethnic groups, it has rekindled tensions over national identity. The 2013 census \u2013 the first after a 22-year hiatus \u2013 took place last month. While international institutions praised the overdue survey, a requirement for entry into the E.U., and have given Bosnia a satisfactory review of its census procedures, activists from\u00a0Popis Monitor<\/a>, a citizen-based monitoring project, claimed that the process was compromised by a failure of the government to inform citizens about the census, particularly on questions of religion and ethnicity, as well as several irregularities during the census collection.<\/p>\n

\u00a0A Disagreement with International Monitors<\/strong><\/p>\n

The International Monitoring Operation (IMO) , established by the European Commission in 2009, is comprised of representatives of Eurostat, the Council of Europe and several United Nations agencies. It monitors\u00a0whether international standards are applied<\/a>, overseeing the various phases of collecting data and processing in order to prevent possible abuses.<\/p>\n

In the case of the Bosnian census, 28 international observers from all over Europe were tasked with observing the enumeration process.<\/p>\n

On October 16th, the day after the census finished, the IMOreleased a statement<\/a>, saying that \u201calthough some minor specific incidents have been observed, as it is the case in every census, the enumeration was overall smooth and conducted in accordance with the agreed methodology and the international recommendations and this across the whole country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey congratulated the government on the results of the census, while all the major media reported on irregularities,\u201d\u00a0Darko Brkan<\/a>\u00a0told techPresident. \u201cThey preferred not to see that this was a flawed process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brkan is the founding president of\u00a0Za\u0161to Ne<\/a>\u00a0(\u201cWhy Not\u201d), a Sarajevo-based NGO that promotes civic activism, government accountability, and the use of digital media and new technologies in deepening democracy in Bosnia. I interviewed Brkan after his keynote at\u00a0Community Boostr Camp<\/a>, a two-day unconference that took place in Sarajevo on November 7-8 that convened 150 activists from all over the Balkans. A sturdy guy in his thirties,\u00a0Brkan describes himself<\/a>\u00a0as an activist with an idea or two on the use of tech in civic movements. Brkan was also involved in Popis Monitor (\u201cCensus Monitor\u201d), which conducted a large awareness raising campaign and created its own crowd-sourced census monitoring map. Based on their campaign, activists from Popis Monitor also said that census was compromised and that there may be political ramifications as a result.<\/p>\n

A month before the census took place, 12 activists from\u00a0Popis Monitor<\/a>\u00a0conducted\u00a0extensive outreach campaigns<\/a>\u00a0to inform citizens about the census procedures, especially those related to\u00a0ethnic and religious questions<\/a>, explaining that “there are no wrong answers to questions about national identity, religious affiliation, or […] on mother language.” While census questions on religion and ethnicity were optional, many political and religious leaders encouraged citizens to identify themselves out of national and religious duty. Properly informing citizens was a task that the Bosnian government didn’t perform adequately, says Brkan.<\/p>\n

The campaign was conducted in 32 cities all over the country, according to\u00a0a report on the Za\u0161to Ne website<\/a>. Its aim was to educate citizens about the census process, offer assistance with questions and problems, and determine the credibility and quality of the data gathered. It was a highly successful campaign, with 40,000 unique visitors to the site a month prior to the census and wide media coverage from about 100 local, national and international outlets, according to Brkan. Though he does not have any official statistics, he says his team estimates that they reached around 500,000 people, about 15 percent of the country’s population.<\/p>\n

The campaign also monitored the census process through e-mail and\u00a0a Ushahidi map<\/a>\u00a0where people could report all kinds of irregularities in the census process, from procedural errors to receiving pressure from census enumerators. Popis Monitor received 859 reports of violations and suspicious activities, 250 of which were reported on the map and the rest through e-mail.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople sent us information from almost half of the municipalities of the country and belonged to different economic statuses,\u201d Brkan said.<\/p>\n

Some of the complaints were about about the procedures enumerators used when entering data on ethnicity, religion and language. But after the census,\u00a0Radio Sarajevo noticed<\/a>\u00a0that the international monitors did not include questions about whether these sensitive questions were conducted properly in the IMO\u2019s post-census survey.<\/p>\n

Others complaints revolved around the lack of privacy and security of data. For example, one of thecensus interviews conducted the census in a caf\u00e9<\/a>\u00a0rather than in the privacy of a home.\u00a0A man wrote to Popis Monitor<\/a>\u00a0and also sent them a picture of questionnaires brought home by his wife who was one of the enumerators. She apparently took the papers home every day throughout the duration of the census.<\/p>\n

\"Census
Census papers scattered on a couch (image: Popis Monitor)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

The citizen-based initiative wasn’t the only one reporting irregularities. The media reported a number of incidents, including one in Skelani, a town at the border crossing between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. The\u00a0police had to stop an individual<\/a>\u00a0who was trying to leave the country with a number of census questionnaires. In the first few days of the census, online media also reported a\u00a0lack of census material<\/a>\u00a0that led to delays in the process.<\/p>\n

techPresident tried to reach out to Zdenko Milinovic, the head of the state statistics bureau, to ask him about these irregularities. After initially agreeing to schedule an interview, Mirsada Adembegovi\u0107, Advisor for Public Relations at the Agency for Statistics declined the interview and explained in an e-mail:<\/p>\n

The reason for this is the opinion of the Central Census Bureau that the Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in line with the Code of Practice of the statistical institutions, holds its role and mission – to conduct the Census-related work with expertise and professionalism in line with the Law on Census of Population, Households and Dwellings in BiH 2013 and the Methodology for the preparation, organization and conduct of the Census, which was adopted as a legal act and approved by the International Monitoring Operation, and not give any comments and information that go beyond the field. Therefore, the Agency did not offer any opinions and comments on the work of NGOs nor indulge in polemics before the Census and will continue with this practice after the completion of the Census.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to a Sarajevo Times account<\/a>\u00a0from last month, though, Milinovic had stated that keeping the census materials at home is a standard procedure for enumerators:<\/p>\n

It is in line with international Census practice for enumerators to take the questionnaires home until their work in the enumeration area is complete and the material is controlled by one of the 3000 controllers. Once controlled it is handed over to the Municipal Census Commission which stores it in a safe place in the municipality.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, the\u00a0census methodology report<\/a>\u00a0referenced above by Adembegovi\u0107, calls for “special protection” of the data:<\/p>\n

Personal data to be collected by the Census are subject to a special protection to be ensured during all the census taking phases (collection, control, processing and Census publishing results) […] Enumerators and all other persons involved in the Census-related activities and operations shall be obliged to keep permanently as official secret all the data collected from individuals related to their personal, family and property characteristics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Allowing enumerators to take their forms home and leave them scattered on a couch certainly doesn’t seem like “special protection.”<\/p>\n

It will take a long time to see if the census was conducted correctly, however. While the first set of data has been published, showing a registration of 3.8 million people and a drop in the population by 13 percent, ethnic statistics will not be released until July 2014.<\/p>\n

Political Implications of a Compromised Census<\/h4>\n

The last census conducted in Bosnia occurred in 1991, just before the country broke out in war, killing over 100,000 people between 1992 and 1995 and displaced more than 2 million. At the time, the last census in 1991 revealed that 43.5 percent of Bosnia’s then 4.4 million people declared themselves Muslim Bosniaks, 31.2 percent Orthodox Serbs and 17.4 percent Catholic Croats. Over five percent said they were “Yugoslav.”<\/p>\n

In 1995, the Dayton Peace Agreement introduced a political system in which Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats were deemed Bosnia’s “constituent peoples” and the only ones with access to the presidency and to the House of Peoples. Bosnia consists of two entities: the Republika Srpska is majority Serbs (who are Orthodox) whereas the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is mostly Bosniak (Muslim) and Croat (Catholic).<\/p>\n

Brkan and other activists fear that the compromised census might affect the next elections, set in October 2014. “The constituent peoples jointly share a set of political rights that exclude those who are not members of these groups, and they want to protect it,”\u00a0Brkan declared to Reuters<\/a>, just days before the census started.<\/p>\n

The Sarajevo Times reported<\/a>, \u201cNumerous cases of irregularities continue to surface from the field, especially in the RS [Republika Srpska], where there are attempts to minimize the number of Bosniaks. It was added that this is mostly done by having enumerators refuse to add family members of Bosniak households who are not present at during census taking to the census list.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brkan told techPresident that ethnic affiliation is not part of his identity and many young people in the country reject the labels established along ethnic lines.<\/p>\n

Back in February, Za\u0161to Ne was part of a coalition that\u00a0conducted a campaign<\/a>\u00a0called \u201cCitizen above all \u2013 Bosnia and Herzegovina without discrimination,\u201d that aimed to encourage citizens who don\u2019t identify themselves as belonging to one of the constituent peoples to declare themselves outside the constituent peoples. The coalition demanded a reform of the current system of government that they deem as \u201cdiscriminatory.\u201d The European Court of Human Rights has also declared Bosnia\u2019s constitution discriminatory. So far, though, Bosnian political leaders have failed to agree on how to amend it.<\/p>\n

Al Jazeera America<\/a>, recently suggested that because of the Dayton provisions, this year’s census may rekindle ethnic tensions:<\/p>\n

Under the Dayton accords, about 180,000 political and civil service positions have been allocated in proportion to the size of each ethnic group, based on the pre-war 1991 census, while top jobs are reserved exclusively for Muslims, Croats and Serbs. [\u2026] Then there are the \u2018others\u2019: those outside of the three constituent groups, including Jews, Roma, and many who are in mixed marriages. They account for around 20 percent of the population, according to some surveys.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 2009, Croatian activist (and frequent PDF speaker) Marko Rakar posted a\u00a0searchable database<\/a>\u00a0of Croatian voters that exposed widespread fraud, two months before local elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy posting the whole list online in searchable form, he invited his fellow Croatians to investigate their own neighborhoods and towns, and to report the results back to his site, Pollitika.com. The resulting uproar was front-page news in Croatia for days, and has provoked a serious debate about amending the country’s constitution to prevent the practice,\u201c\u00a0our own Micah Sifry wrote<\/a>, when he interviewed Rakar back in 2010.<\/p>\n

During the interview, Rakar also explained, “Croatian history is full of ‘unfinished’ stories, and unless we start talking and resolving them we will be forever burdened by our past.”<\/p>\n

In a similar vein, Bosnia’s Popis Monitor, is a significant example of a citizen-based effort on a civic issue that matters in defining the future of a troubled country. And it might even be instrumental in fostering a conversation on Bosnia’s own \u201cunfinished stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Disclaimer<\/b>: TechSoup provided travel funding to the Sarajevo conference where Darko Brkan was interviewed for this feature.<\/i><\/p>\n

Personal Democracy Media is grateful to the Omidyar Network and the UN Foundation for their generous support of techPresident’s WeGov section.<\/i><\/p>\n

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