Sarajevo - Demographics

Demographics

The last official census in Bosnia and Herzegovina took place 1991 and recorded 527,049 people living in city of Sarajevo (ten municipalities). In the settlement of Sarajevo proper, there were 416,497 inhabitants. The war displaced hundreds of thousands of people, a large majority of whom have not returned.

Today, Sarajevo's population is not known clearly and is based on estimates contributed by the United Nations Statistics Division and the Federal Office of Statistics of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, among other national and international non-profit organizations. As of June 2011, the population of the city's four municipalities is estimated to be 411,161, whereas the Sarajevo Canton population is estimated at 578,757. With an area of 493 square miles (1,280 km2), Sarajevo has a population density of about 2,173 inhabitants per square kilometre (5,630 /sq mi). The Novo Sarajevo municipality is the most densely populated part of Sarajevo with about 7,524 inhabitants per square kilometre (19,490 /sq mi), while the least densely populated is the Stari Grad, with 2,742 inhabitants per square kilometre (7,100 /sq mi).

The war changed the ethnic and religious profile of the city. It had long been a multicultural city, and often went by the nickname of "Europe's Jerusalem". At the time of the 1991 census, 49.2 per cent of the city's population of 527,049 were Bosniaks, 29.8 percent Serbs, 10.7 percent Yugoslavs, 6.6 percent Croats and 3.6 percent other ethnicities (Jews, Romas, etc.). By 2002, 79.6 per cent of the canton's population of 401,118 were Bosniak, 11.2 percent Serb, 6.7 percent Croat and 2.5 percent others (Jews, Romas, etc.). The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina census that the 2002 data is based on only included these four ethnic categories, and academic Fran Markowitz states that it is not clear "whether the state acted by fiat to turn Muslims (and perhaps Jugoslaveni and Ostali ) into Bosniaks, or if its citizens through their self-declarations made that switch in identity". Many Serbs left urban areas including Sarajevo during the conflict, but the falling number of Serbs is also partly due to the redrawing of municipal boundaries as part of the Dayton Agreement.

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