Questions about ethnicity, religion and mother tongue should be omitted from the list

Questions about ethnicity, religion and mother tongue should be omitted from the upcoming Population Census, given the extremely unstable socio-political situation and lack of trust in institutions, and the census can be organized in October next year at the earliest.

This is the position of a group of non-governmental organizations and public opinion research agencies that submitted proposals to the Government to amend the Draft Law on Population Census.

The executive director of the NGO Juventas, Ivana Vujović, believes that the whole story about the census needs to be taken seriously, that it is necessary to return to the focus of expertise and make a move away from the everyday political and layman's approach to the issue.

"If the entire narrative related to the preparation of the census was reduced to a daily political story, then it would mean that the Government decided to deviate from the expert approach," Vujović told the PR Center.

She pointed out that it is obvious that the census cannot be carried out this year, because there are no elementary conditions for it.

"Probably, the preparation of the Draft Law cannot be finished by the end of the year, and it needs to be voted on in the Parliament. From the moment the Law is adopted, it is necessary to set aside another six to nine months for the preparation of the Census. There are also various international standards that say that turbulent socio-political periods should be avoided, and then the census should not be conducted. There are many reasons. One of the basic ones is guaranteeing the safety of enumerators. If tensions are very high, no one can guarantee the safety of the enumerator who enters the privacy of someone's home alone," said Vujović.

It is necessary, as she said, to avoid the summer season, the big winter, and two terms are usually mentioned, April or October, provided that there is no choice during that period.

"So the earliest period is October 2022, which is a date known to MONSTAT and the Ministry of Finance and Social Welfare for a long time, so it is strange why there is so much talk about the possibility of organizing the census very quickly." Of course, there is also the epidemiological situation that must be taken into account," explained Vujović.

He believes that insisting on collecting data on ethnicity, religion and mother tongue would be wrong.

"It would cause great tensions and lead to pre-census campaigns and would negatively affect the quality of all other data. So, one of the requests for amendment is that these three questions should not be asked. We also proposed a number of issues that we believe are important for the creation of national policies in the field of social and health care, youth, and the protection of persons with disabilities," stated Vujović.

She pointed out that the way the census is conducted is a good indicator of the situation in the country and if it is not conducted adequately, it will show the absence of professionalism and expertise.

"My expectation is that the changes that we proposed will be adopted by the Government and that this process will be organized as it should be, that citizens' trust in the institutions that are important for the implementation of the census will be restored and that in the end we will receive data that we can work with ", Vujović said.

Remarks, proposals and suggestions on the draft law on the census of population, households and apartments in 2021 were submitted by the executive director of Juventas Ivana Vujović, the executive director of the StarsUP agency Sanja Baltić, the executive director of the Center for Democratic Transition (CDT) Dragan Koprivica, the co-owner of the DeFacto agency Olivera Komar, executive director of the DAMAR agency Vuk Čeđenović, president of the Management Board of the Center for Monitoring and Research (CeMI) Zlatko Vujović and director of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights (CEDEM) Milena Bešić.