Thirteen years after the first and only comprehensive survey on youth and the youth sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina was conducted, the first preliminary results of the latest survey on the position of youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina were presented today. These results show that the wish to leave the country is still high, as more than 50% of young people state that they want to leave Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The official results of the research will be published on the website of the Institute for Youth Development KULT at the end of July this year.
Since 2008, when the first research of this kind was conducted, the lives of young people have changed significantly. Their daily lives are shaped by various turbulences and changes, but also by the development and modernization of technology, which was most evident during the COVID – 19 pandemic.
According to the 2013 census, there are 773,850 young people aged 15 to 30 living in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In other words, 21.91% of the population are young people.
Youth research is quite complex and requires insight into all spheres of society in general, because there is no area of life that is not important for young people. In addition, when researching the position and needs of young people, we must take into account specific generational issues that concern only this population. The research process was conducted with the application of the strictest methodological standards, in which the consultations with the Agency for Statistics of BiH helped significantly. The research will be publicly available and will benefit all interested parties, primarily decision makers in creating concrete measures aimed at improving the position of young people in our country, said Šeherzada Halimić, executive director of the Institute for Youth Development KULT.
The research covered more than 10 thematic areas such as education, work, employment and youth entrepreneurship, social care, health care, safety, culture and sports, activism and leisure, and youth participation, volunteering, mobility and migration. 3132 respondents from all over BiH participated in the research, of which 51.8% were women and 48.1% were men, aged between 15 and 30 years.
Young people believe that the priorities of BiH authorities in the next 5 years should be employment and education, and then health care, security and migration management in the context of the departure of the population from our country. Preliminary results show that more than 65% of young people live with their parents/guardians, and that there is still a high interest in leaving Bosnia and Herzegovina, said Aziz Đipa, head of the monitoring, evaluation and research department at the KULT Institute for Youth Development, adding: “Taking into account the age of the respondents, other surveys, the existence of undeclared work and various methodologies used for labor market research, it is very difficult to determine the youth unemployment rate in BiH. However, youth unemployment is still estimated to be high in relation to the working population.”
It is worrying that 40% of young people included in this research stated that a member of their immediate family has left BiH in the last 7 years, and that departures most often take place in suburban areas. Also, the results show that more than 50% of respondents have an interest in leaving our country, while 12.1% of them have already taken concrete steps in this direction.
Young people most often use Instagram (80.4%), followed by YouTube (69.3%) and Facebook (67.3%).
When it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic, young people are generally dissatisfied with the reaction of the authorities at all levels of government and in various sectors (education, health and the labor market sector). However, they assess the reaction of the health sector the least negatively.
The research on the position of youth in BiH was conducted by the Institute for Youth Development KULT with the support of the Swedish people through the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and the Swedish Embassy in BiH, with the support of GIZ by order of the Federal Ministry for International Cooperation and Development and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), through the project “Vocational Education in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
