Migrations: FRY

09 December 2002

Serbia and Montenegro have recently reached an agreement revising their reciprocal relations to give birth to a new form of confederation whose specific features are to be progressively defined.
Maintaining distinctive administrative systems is a top agenda item, the issue having an immediate incidence on migratory policies and borders control.

Serbia and Montenegro are surrounded by seven different countries and - given the porosity of their Eastern borders - throughout the past decade, they have become a major transit point. Population movements from these two countries are linked to the conflicts occurred on the territory of former Yugoslavia, to the worsened economic situation and to the economic sanctions regime of the latest years. In the past, transitional fluxes were eased by the fact that nationals of countries such as China, Ukraine, Moldova and Romania were not requested a visa to enter the Federation. At the same time, federal and national Serb authorities had no particular interest in stopping west-bound migrants.
The same circumstances facilitated the growing of human trafficking networks on the territory of Serbia and Montenegro.

A further problem is constituted by the high number of refugees � more than 400,000 from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia � and IDPs � around 200,000, mainly Roma and Serbs from Kosovo.

2002 - Census
From 1 to 15 April 2002 Serbia has undertaken the first census since 1991: the consultation will allow analyses on population changes occurred during the last decade. The census involved all the residents on the territory, including foreigners, refugees and IDPs. The first results of the census were made public at middle of May and clearly indicated an overall 0.9 decrease of the population since 1991. The total population amounts to 7,478,820 inhabitants. General decrease showed differentiation in disaggregate numbers: while Central Serbia registered an overall -2.3, Vojvodina actually showed a reverse trend with a 3 percent increase.
During the last ten years the number of Serb citizens residing abroad had a 36.5 percent growth and nowadays amounts to 395,492.
The political value of the census is highlighted by the events of the Presevo valley � Southern Serbia - theatre of guerrilla actions of the UCMPB (Medvedja, Presevo, Bujanovac Liberation Front). The decision of the Albanian moderate political factions in the region to take part to the census seemed to mark a historical change of attitude in the relations between the Albanian minorities in the region and Belgrade and could marginalise extremist forces on both sides.
Presevo Valley Albanians had boycotted all previous censuses since 1981. This new orientation can be explained taking different factors into due consideration. Belgrade had in fact accepted some of the specific requests put forward by the Albanian community such as the attribution of a central role in the process to the OSCE, the possibility for 3,200 IDPs to participate in the census and a deadline extension to the 25th of April (10 additional days beyond the originally scheduled date).