Why is it so difficult to hold a census in North Macedonia?

How the shadows of past tensions between the Macedonian majority and ethnic Albanian minority have impeded population registration in a country where rights are dependent on numerical representation.

Registering a country’s population is a routine statistical endeavour, carried out once every five or 10 years without much fanfare or disagreement in most countries. But this has never been the case in North Macedonia, a multiethnic country in the Balkan region. The complexity of the process, its politicisation, and fears over the potential repercussions of revealing the exact breakdown of different ethnicities have left the NATO country and aspiring European Union-member without census data for 20 years. In April, North Macedonia planned to hold its first census since 2001. But it was delayed yet again – until September. Although the officially cited reason was the coronavirus, the shadows of past tensions between the Macedonian majority and ethnic Albanian minority are still present, illustrating the challenge of documenting the country’s population demographics – especially when certain rights and privileges are tied to a community’s physical numbers.