Croatia is a relatively small country located in Central Europe, with a population of just over 4 million people. The main ethnic group is Croatian, making up 90% of the population. Other minority groups include Serbs, Bosniaks, Hungarians, and Italians. The majority of Croatians are Roman Catholic, with other Christian denominations making up much of the remaining population. The literacy rate in Croatia is 98%, and the average life expectancy is 78 years. There are also significant Jewish and Muslim populations living in Croatia as well. Check hyperrestaurant to learn more about Croatia in 2009.
Social conditions
In addition to the compulsory insurance, there is voluntary health insurance. In 2013, healthcare accounted for 7.1 percent of the country’s GDP. Through the rehabilitation of injured in the civil war, these percentages have increased significantly. There are 2 doctors and 6 hospital beds in 1,000 residents. The infant mortality rate is 4 per thousand. Visit AbbreviationFinder to see the definitions of HRV and acronym for Croatia.
Yugoslavia was divided internally at the beginning of World War II and was relatively easily occupied by the Germans in 1941. The German troops installed a puppet government in Croatia consisting of Slavonia, areas of Dalmatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and launched racist campaigns. Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and opposition Croats were executed in concentration camps or forced to flee. During the communist-led resistance struggle against the Nazi occupation, local committees were set up in the liberated areas. After the resistance movement’s take on Zagreb in May 1945, Croatia’s Antifascist National Liberation Council formed the government. At the end of the year, Croatia entered as one of the republics of The Yugoslav Federal People’s Republic. Check to see Croatia population.
Under Yugoslav socialism, Croatia maintained and developed its national independence, which to some extent was detrimental to the national minorities. In a purge campaign in the Croatian Communist League in 1972, Matica Hrvatska, an organization tasked with disseminating knowledge of Croatian culture, was abolished.
In the late 1980’s, the political system was liberalized. The Communist Federation of Yugoslavia relinquished the monopoly of power and political leadership prescribed by the Constitution, and in April the first elections were held with the participation of several parties since World War II.
Croatia’s parliamentary elections ended with a victory for the center-right party, the Croatian Democracy Union, HDZ, which was in favor of turning Yugoslavia into a federal republic of independent states. The head of HDZ, retired General Franjo Tudjman, was elected President of the Republic. In December, Parliament passed a new constitution recognizing the right to withdraw from the federation.
Croatia declared its independence in June 1991, while the Serbs of Krajina expressed their desire for a detachment from Croatia; Slovenia also proclaimed its independence.
The Yugoslav Federal Army, whose chiefs were mainly Serbs, intervened in Croatia and Slovenia, declaring that the detachments were a threat to the Yugoslav unity. War broke out with great losses on both sides.
In November, the Tudjman government arrested the leaders of the right-wing extremist Croatian Law Party, the PCD, and dissolved its militias, following charges of conspiracy against the authorities. At its founding in December 1991, the PCD had taken the name of an old nationalist party whose leader had been the head of government in the puppet government during the Nazi occupation.
Population, society and rights
As also happened in other countries of the Balkan area, in Croatia the population decreased after the war of 1992-95, both as a result of deaths and emigration. There are still around 62,000 Croatian refugees abroad and the procedures for returning home are still difficult to implement. Despite the fall in the fertility rate, immigration from other countries (especially by Bosnian Croats) has however ensured a substantial demographic balance in recent years, even if the pre-war levels have not been reached. Within Croatia there is still a minority of Serbian ethnicity, just over 185,000 people, or 4.4% of the total population. Before the war they were about double. Despite the forced demographic redistribution, in Croatia, inter-ethnic tensions still exist: in September 2013, following the issuance of public notices also in the Cyrillic (ie Serbian) alphabet, violent protests broke out in the city of Vukovar. Under the 2002 constitutional law on national minorities, bilingual signs are mandatory in municipalities that (according to the 2011 census data) have a Serbian presence equal to one third of the population. The school attendance rate has returned to 99%, while many children did not go to school during the war. There is still gender discrimination in the world of work, especially with regard to the active population, which is much greater among men.