STATISTICS ON THE POSITION OF YOUTH IN BIH
Youth are not an interesting social category because they are extremely passive, so the research conducted on problems and requirements of youth are extremely rare, superfluous and useless for scientific purposes. Their passiveness is conditioned by a bad social and economic situation, caused primarily by high unemployment rates.
BURNING YOUTH ISSUES: LEAVING THE COUNTRY, UNEMPLOYMENT, UNSUITABLE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM, POVERTY
1. According to most researches conducted, youth wish to leave BiH:
– from 1996 to 2002: 100,000 youth left BiH,
– state analysis: 66% of youth wish to leave BiH
– research by Glas tihe ve?ine 2007 (The Voice of Silent Majority) (UNDP, conducted by Oxford Research International), 62.6% of youth wish to leave BiH
– Economic Treasury of FBiH: 77% youth wish to leave BiH
– UNESCO: 79% of researchers from the area of engineering, 81% of magistrates and 75% of PhDs have left BiH since 1995.
– research conducted by the Institute for Youth Development KULT as a part of the research for local youth strategies: around 67% of youth from Sarajevo municipalities would leave BiH
– according to a global research on competitiveness of the World Forum for 2010, BiH was in 131st place out of 133 countries in the category of brain drain.
2. There is over 50% of working-age youth unemployed.
– Educational system provides the width to youth along with a large quantity of information, but does not teach them how to use the information. Educational system is not in coordination with the market requirements and the employers have no expert cadre that can be productive right after employment. Therefore experience is required, that youth do not have the opportunity to acquire, which leaves them discriminated and uncompetitive on the labour market.
– The Action Plan of employment in FBiH for the period 2010-2013: unemployed youth were recognised as the key target group. in 2011, no funds were allocated for conducting the Action Plan, and in 2012, 360,000 BAM was planned for the implementation of the programme measures. There are 368,922 of unemployed in FBiH. The employment programme in Republika Srpska is primarily based on cost subventions for apprentice employment, which is not a sustainable employment strategy.
3. BiH youth would work if they had jobs, but there are no new job vacancies. Youth are neither trained, nor does the country provide them with benefits to start their own businesses and create workplaces for themselves and others.
4. Poverty:
Poverty, devastated economy and new harsh market laws, as well as the non-existence of clear employment criteria, lead regional youth to a position without perspective the consequences of which are: crime, leaving the country, passiveness, corruption, not starting a family. The long-term pause between completing education and finding a first job leads to lower confidence in youth, and often depression.
GOVERNMENT’S RELATIONSHIP TOWARDS YOUTH
1) In FBiH there is not a single Ministry that took over all the obligations from the Youth Law of FBiH that it has towards the youth population. The care for youth in RS is not entirely systematically arranged, since there is often a lack of system and strategic manners of resolving their problems. At the level of the state there is no institutional care for youth: no liable ministry, no youth strategy at a state level, no budget allocations for youth.
2) Beside the Federal Ministry of Education and Science, that plans more serious allocations for students in 2012, all other Federal ministries do not express any serious budget interest for the youth population of FBiH. Liable ministries (primarily of labour and development) have no particular youth employment and business development programmes.
3) Non-transparent and often illegal allocation of funds for associations, as well as for youth associations by all governmental levels leads to closing down youth centres and termination of numerous youth activities in smaller local communities. Underdevelopment of the youth sector in BiH reveals that youth have no alternatives for the plights of the BiH society: bet shops, pubs, crime, etc.
4) In 2010, the authorities allocated only 2 BAM per capita for support and development of youth. According to the previous researches of NGOs, in the previous 4 years the authorities in BiH allocated the least amount of funds for youth requirements, a whole of 14 million BAM in 4 years, which is barely 0.05% of the total budget funds. So, even though youth comprise 25% of the population, in 2010, only 0.05% of budget was allocated for them.
5) Only 10% of BiH municipalities has a youth officer that is in charge of youth-related activities only, 47% of municipalities have a youth strategy (mostly not implemented), and in 46% of municipalities there is a special budget item for youth, even though they are all legal requirements (for more statistics on established mechanisms of governmental care for youth at a local level can be found HERE)
REGIONAL STATISTICS
1) UNEMPLOYMENT:
CROATIA (age 15-24): Youth unemployment: in 2011: almost 40% (Economist.com)
EU (age 15-24): in 2008: 21.1%, 2010: 32.6%, with the fact that there are youth social care programmes in the EU
SERBIA: 48% of unemployed under the age of 30
2) YOUTH LEAVING:
CROATIA: 2010: 29.4%
SERBIA: in the fourth place according to brain drain in the world; during the 90s, 5% of population moved from Serbia, 90% of whom were under 40 and mostly highly educated.
3) GOVERNMENTAL CARE:
CROATIA: No youth law, but has had a National Youth Programme since 2009
SERBIA: in 2011, it adopted a Youth Law, that will be enacted in 16 January 2012; highly abstract
4) EDUCATION:
Improper educational policy in the whole region
Youth have no funds for education.
CROATIA: While some countries invest up to 2% of GDB in high education, Croatia stands out with 0.87% of GDB investments, while 23 of 27 EU member-states allocate more than this amount.
Leave a comment