Every sixth citizen of the former Yugoslavia experienced forced displacement

"In the last decade of the 20th century, the former Yugoslavia was theatre of four wars: 1. War in Slovenia (June 27– July 7, 1991); 2. War in Croatia (summer 1991 – 1995); 3. War in Bosnia and Herzegovina (spring 1992 – November 1995); 4. War between NATO and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, i.e. Serbia and Montenegro (March 23 – June 11, 1999). Each of these conflicts resulted in thousands of refugees (individuals who left the republic of their origin and went either to some other ex-Yugoslav republic or to a third country) and internally displaced persons (IDP, individuals who found refuge in some other location within their republic of origin). In fact, when the conflicts began, and Yugoslavia went ablaze in a whole series of wars, an explosion of forced migration occurred.

If UNHCR data (UNHCR, 2000a; UNHCR, 2000b) are compared with the figures of the last pre-war census of the former Yugoslavia, in 1991 (Savezni zavod za statistiku, 1998), the results are astonishing: out of 23,528,230 inhabitants of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, 3,725,300 were refugees and IDPs, which represents 15.83 % of the total population. This means that almost every sixth citizen of the former Yugoslavia has experienced forced displacement," Prof. Dr. Goran Opacic and Colleagues report.

"If data from the territories where serious conflicts actually took place (Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo) are analysed, the figures are even more striking: out of 11,079,665 inhabitants of these territories, there were 3,716,300 refugees and IDPs, i.e. 33.54 % of the total population, which means that every third inhabitant of these territories became refugee or IDP. If, finally, we perform a similar analysis for each of these territories separately, we will realize that the percentage for Croatia (4,760,344 inhabitants) was 15.58%, for Bosnia (4,364,574 inhabitants) 51.08%, and for Kosovo (1,954,747 inhabitants) 47.7%. In other words, during the wars in these countries, almost every sixth inhabitant of Croatia and every second inhabitant of Bosnia and Kosovo experienced forced displacement."

New data show that "Croatia has almost entirely solved the problem, Bosnia has mainly solved the problem of refugees (but remains burdened with a huge number of IDPs), while Serbia, a country of 7.5 million inhabitants (Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, 2002) remains burdened both with a huge number of refugees and a huge number of IDPs (even 14 years after the end of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina, and 10 years after the NATO bombing campaign).

Perhaps we should here say more about what, for the countries under consideration, “solving the problem of refugees and IDPs” means. In the case of Croatia, according to the latest Croatian official data, “since the beginning of the process of return, in 1995, there have been 342,897 returnees: 219,255 IDPs, predominantly citizens of Croatian ethnicity (64%), and 123,642 minority returns of the citizens of Serbian ethnicity (36%)” (Ministarstvo mora turizma prometa i razvitka, 2007). As for the problem of refugees in that country (287,000 in 1993), mostly ethnic Croats who formerly had been citizens of Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Raseta, 1997), these people stopped being refugees, either through emigrating to a third country or through acquiring Croatian citizenship (UNHCR, 2009d).

In the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to the latest UNHCR data, the total number of refugees and displaced persons who returned to/within Bosnia and Herzegovina, as of 31 December 2008, was 1,026,692, of whom 447,577 were returnees from abroad and 579,115 were internally displaced persons (UNHCR – Representation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2008). The difference between the 1993 figure of IDPs in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1,290,000) and the latest UNHCR data on them (131,786 – in January 2009), diminished by the aforementioned 579,115 returning IDPs, still leaves a group of 579,099 IDPs who are officially unaccounted for. Where have these people disappeared to? According to a fairly recent BiH governmental report, “the majority of [these] persons have solved their status by returning to their prewar addresses [without notifying the authorities]. It was also apparent that a certain number of persons decided to integrate in places of their displacement, while a number of displaced persons also found their permanent solutions by leaving BiH” (Nenadic et al. 2005)."

Goran Opacic, Goran Knezevic, Vladimir Jovic, Borislav Radovic: Concomitants of Repatriation - The Case of Former Yugoslavia.
in: Traue, Johler, Gavrilovic (Eds.): Migration, Integration and Health.
Pabst, Lengerich/Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-89967-641-9

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