Happy Youth Day, Land of Old People!

Youth are leaving! Thousands of people leave every year… Entire families are leaving… These are only some of the headlines we’re seeing in newspapers, online portals…

In the last two years alone, 80 000 left BiH, mostly youth – say our radio hosts with concern in their voices.

Tomorrow is August 12 – International Youth Day.  

In 1999, the United Nations (UN) designated August 12 as the International Youth Day, which has been celebrated ever since in order to promote youth activism and acknowledge the efforts and activities of youth around the world who contribute to positive changes, development and economic progress in their communities and the society in general.

Last year we celebrated it without 150,000 youth who, according to statistics presented in the Survey on the position and needs of youth in FBiH, implemented by the Institute for Youth Development KULT, left BiH between the end of the war and 2013. 

How many others left?

We don’t know, because our country doesn’t have the data. None of the competent institutions have official data in the number of people leaving, and the numbers we have come from NGOs and occasional statements by “concerned” officials.

Where are our policies for keeping youth in the country? Where are the strategies? Why isn’t the Youth Law being enforced?

Is more than 20 years of ignoring the needs of youth – our future – not enough? Is it too little? Are we going to wait for 20 years more before we stop talking and start working on it?

There is no document providing guidelines for creating a better living standard in BiH at the state level. Youth in the Federation of BiH have been waiting for a youth strategy to be adopted for over a year, which RS is a slightly brighter spot on this dark horizon – they have adopted their third consecutive youth policy.

Youth are unsatisfied, and the government neglectful.

There is not political will to prevent youth from leaving, no programs to encourage them to stay, not even empty promises of a better future – that BiH will offer the same as the EU that we want to join so much, that youth will have a promising future and faith in a better life, that they won’t socialize mostly in lines in front of the unemployment service and entrust their hopes and dreams to embassies of other countries.

One representative at the National Assembly of RS expressed concern about the decreasing number of students in elementary schools, and said that this entity is losing 20,000 inhabitants every year.

In Sarajevo Canton, from 2013 to 2015, the number of students enrolled in high school decreased by 23%, and in the 2016/17 academic year has the lowest first grade enrollment rates in the past 5 years.

Well, happy Youth Day, land of old people, who doesn’t need newborns or new mothers, whose only use for the Youth Law is defining the age range of youth as 15-30 when discussing whether they left the country legally or illegally, and which agency they used to go to Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, when noting that 60% of youth are unemployed, that they’re not satisfied with education, healthcare…

Happy Youth Day to the country that 4 out of 5 youth would leave immediately, according to the data of the Institute.