FYR of Macedonia/ 4.2 Specific policy issues and recent debates  

4.2.4 Cultural diversity and inclusion policies

Officially recognised ethnic (cultural) minorities are those mentioned in the Preamble of the Constitution: Albanians, Turks, Roma, Serbs, Bosnians and Vlachs.

According to the latest census of 2002, the total population was 2 022 547 of which 64.18% are Macedonians (1 297 981). The rest of the population is made up of:

Table 3:     Share of ethnic minority groups, 2002

Source:     State Statistical Office.

In 2006, there was an official demand made by Croatia to recognise the Croatian ethnic minority as a Constitutional minority, but this demand was not accepted by the Macedonian government.

These minority groups have the constitutional right to freely express, nurture and develop their own cultural, religious, and linguistic identity and national features. The Ministry of Culture pays great attention to this, particularly in the decision-making process about projects submitted in open competitions, and in the creation of the yearly cultural programmes.

Following the signing of the Ohrid Framework Agreement of 13.08.2001, the following amendments have been made to the Constitution for the different cultural communities:

• in units of local self-government, where at least 20% of the population speak a particular language, that language and its alphabet will be used as an official language, in addition to the Macedonian language and its Cyrillic alphabet; and
• laws that directly concern culture, the use of languages, education, etc., are to be passed by a majority vote in the Assembly. In this regard, there must be a majority of votes from those members of parliament who claim to belong to the communities that are not part of a majority population.

What concerns other social groups and communities, unofficially, is that there is a gay community that consists of nearly 30-40 000 people, but it has never been officially recognised. On the other hand, the gay community has recently been the subject of vigorous public polemics over whether people with "different" sexual orientation should be included in the new Law on Protection and Prevention of Discrimination, the Law on Family etc. The government refuses to mention this group in the laws.

The Law on Protection and Prevention of Discrimination was adopted in January 2011, without explicitly mentioning sexual orientation.

The new Census that started in October 2011 was interrupted and then completely cancelled after only days. It started with the resignation of the president of the State Census Commission, and very soon with the resignation of the whole Commission because of some differences in the legislative interpretation and serious disagreements about the methodology for conducting the census in the field (especially in areas with ethnically mixed populations), which would have resulted in incorrect data. Government officials stated that there were technical problems and lack of preparedness for this large statistical operation to be finished in 15 days. It was planned that a new Census would be organised within 6 to 12 months.  

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