What will be the losses of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) if the trend of young people leaving is not stopped? The authorities in this country do not have an answer to this question, because they have not dealt with this problem in recent years.
In the last 13 years alone, BiH has lost twelve percent or about 409,000 inhabitants, according to data from the state statistics agency.
Official statistics record a particularly drastic drop in the number of students at domestic faculties. There are a third or about 35,000 fewer of them today than ten years ago.
Professor of demography Stevo Pasalic, who has been following students for years working as a university professor and rector, says that the decline in the number of students is particularly worrying.
Indifference of the authorities to the problems of young people
According to data from the United Nations (UN) Population Fund from October this year, there is one young person in BiHin relation to every one pensioner, in contrast to the seventies of the twentieth century, when there were almost ten young people for every retired person in BiH.
“It is very important to establish political peace and start planning economic progress in BiH. I am not sure that we will have good situation if the politicians do not turn to a different narrative and a different way of organizing life in BiH,” Rifat Skrijelj, Rector of the University of Sarajevo.
According to him, it is necessary to start investing more in scientific research and higher education, so that young people can have scholarships and research projects to work on during and after their studies.
He says politicians say they want to keep young people, while at the same time maintaining a moratorium on employment.
“How do they intend to keep a young man who graduates from university and cannot get a job, because he has a ban on employment. The University of Sarajevo alone is looking for the employment of 150 assistants, because in the past four years we have lost around 300 members of the academic community,” says Skrijelj.
The report found that state institutions still need to develop strategies based on the systematic collection of data on youth problems in order to be able to develop quality policies and mitigate the consequences of migration, Radio Slobodna Evropa reports.
E.Dz.
