III.

Population

The population of Serbia (including Kosovo and Vojvodina) in 2007 was estimated at 10,150,265. Almost two thirds of the population of Serbia (including Kosovo and Vojvodina) is ethnically Serb; excluding the two provinces, Serbs comprise almost 88 per cent of the population.

Minorities include Muslims, ethnic Croats and Hungarians, Albanians, and others. In Vojvodina, more than half the population is Serb, with a large ethnic Hungarian minority. In Kosovo, more than 90 per cent of the population is Albanian; Albanians made up 17 per cent of the total population of Serbia at the 1991 census. The small minorities of Croats who lived in Vojvodina and Belgrade, as well as many of the Muslims (who live mainly in the Sandžk region of the south-west), have fled Serbia since 1991.

There were about 2.1 million ethnic Serbs living in the other republics of the former Yugoslavia in 1991. Of this total about 1.4 million (66 per cent) lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina; 580,000 (28 per cent) in Croatia; fewer than 60,000 (3 per cent) in Montenegro; and fewer than 50,000 (2 per cent) each in Slovenia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

The official language is Serbian, which is written using the Cyrillic script. Minorities also speak their own languages, notably Albanian and Hungarian. The dominant religion is the Serbian Orthodox branch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, with smaller numbers of Muslims, Catholics, and Protestants.

The capital and largest city of Serbia is Belgrade (population, 2002, 1,119,020), which was also the capital of Serbia and Montenegro. Other important cities are Novi Sad (190,602, 2002), Niš (173,390, 2002), Subotica (99,471, 2002), Zrenjanin (79,545, 2002), and Kragujevac (145,890, 2002).