Serbia: Overcoming Barriers to Inter-Ethnic Dialogue

Lack of interethnic dialogue between Albanians, Bosniaks, Roma and the Serbian majority negatively affects the country’s integration processes and slows its democratic progress. Yet there is little recent and reliable research data on the experiences of these ethnic minority communities, and the interactions between communities.

In November 2018, NDI conducted public opinion research to better understand attitudes towards minority communities among the the Serbian-majority population and to assess the position and needs of citizens from the Albanian, Bosniak, and Roma minority communities, to fill this data gap. NDI found that there is a lack of personal interethnic interactions and lingering negative perceptions of minority communities.

Nonetheless, the research indicates that ethnic Serbs are open to government efforts to improve minority inclusion and representation. For example, just under half of ethnic Serbs indicated that the government should have mechanisms or regulations that would help ethnic minorities have increased representation in parliament, including through such measures as a quota system. This offers NDI’s partners representing the three above-named minority groups an opening that can help strengthen their contributions to public policy development.

NDI is working with Albanian, Bosniak and Roma communities to utilize the results of this research to increase intercommunal dialogue and support policy development efforts addressing barriers to political and social inclusion that are specific to each ethnic group and limit political participation at both the local and national levels. This includes exploring how to create better policy and legislative frameworks for minority inclusion from local and national perspectives.