North Macedonia Holds First Census in 20 Years

North Macedonia’s recent census was the first in more than 20 years. (Wikipedia.)

North Macedonia completed a national census for the first time since 2001 on September 30. This census holds significance because it could grant special rights to minority ethnic groups, which compose more than 20 percent of the population. This threshold is of particular interest to ethnic Albanians, who make up around a quarter of North Macedonia. 

The government of North Macedonia grants special rights to ethnicities that make up more than 20 percent of the population. These special rights include employment quotas and language allowances. For this reason, political parties representing ethnic groups have threatened not to recognize the results of the census should their voters’ ethnicities not represent a certain percentage of the population. The Albanian party (DUI) has asserted its demand to see Albanians at the special rights threshold of 20 percent. Ethnic Turks and Bulgarians have taken a similar tune in demanding census results; however, the Balkan government will not officially confirm the ethnic breakdown of the country until 2022. The country canceled its 2011 census due to these same ethnopolitical pressures. 

Since the dissolution of former Yugoslavia in 1992, North Macedonia has faced recurring ethnic tension. Like other countries in the Balkans, the road out of the Yugoslav wars has been rocky. Despite delays marked up to the COVID-19 pandemic, the North Macedonian government pushed this census through ethnopolitical roadblocks with historical roots. 

Minorities of North Macedonia, such as ethnic Albanians, Serbs, Turks, Romanis, and others,  have campaigned to achieve greater political representation. The Ohrid Agreement, signed in 2001 by the Macedonian government and Albanian representatives, deescalated ethnic tensions in the country and tied minority political rights to the current 20 percent population threshold. The agreement outlines various minority rights, such as the allowed use of ethnic identity images in public spaces, the officialization of languages over the one-fifth threshold, and the delegation of minority rights issues to local governments.

September’s census, twenty years in the making, is the culmination of the political worries the Ohrid Agreement set into motion. The results of this census will have the potential to heavily impact ethnic political participation in the country’s 2022 political season.