DODIK: OUR GOAL IS CLEAR - FOR SRPSKA TO BE COUNTRY OF FAMILY AND CHILDREN, AS STRONG FAMILY IS THE FOUNDATION OF SOCIETY

BANJA LUKA, AUGUST 28 /SRNA/ – President Milorad Dodik says he sees the Srpska Loves You – Love Is Rights campaign, above all, as a message of optimism, as it speaks about what has been done so far, but even more about what kind of Republika Srpska we want.

"We want Republika Srpska with more children being born, with strong and secure families. Where young people stay. Where our people return. Where no mother, father or child is left alone when times are difficult. Where we believe in tomorrow, because our people has never been a people without hope," Dodik stressed in a column for the Republika Srpska Media System – SRNA, which we are publishing in full:

Demography is one of the greatest issues of our time. But it is not a reason for fear and pessimism; rather, it is a call to understand the times we live in and to work decisively for the future.

When we look at the figures, we see that Republika Srpska is not some kind of European exception, nor is it facing a problem that others do not have. Quite the contrary.

In 2024, the European Union had a fertility rate of 1.34 children per woman. Serbia stood at 1.63, Republika Srpska at around 1.5, while Montenegro was at 1.8.

None of these rates is sufficient for simple population replacement, which requires around 2.1 children per woman.

Around 3.55 million children were born in the European Union in 2024, almost half as many as in the 1960s.

Therefore, we are facing a major challenge, but we are not alone. This is a challenge facing our region and practically the entire European continent. That is why I like the way Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić speaks about demography in a simple way that everyone can understand – there is no state and no future without children.

Europe needs more children. So do we. And I believe we can have more. Perhaps this is the most important difference in the way we need to talk about demography.

I do not believe in a policy that tells people daily that there are fewer and fewer of us, that our schools are becoming empty and that the future has already been lost. People do not start families out of fear. They start them out of love, security, hope and faith that tomorrow will be better than today. Our job is to strengthen that faith.

In recent years, Republika Srpska has done a great deal. We have built a system in which families know that the Republic stands by them – from the moment people wish to become parents, through the birth of a child, and throughout the child’s upbringing, medical treatment and education.

We finance in vitro fertilization, and thanks to these procedures, more than 2,200 babies have been born. We provide assistance for every newborn child. We have increased the maternity allowance to BAM 746 per month. We particularly support the third and the fourth child.

Republika Srpska has assumed the reimbursing of full gross salary during maternity leave. We have increased support for parent-caregivers. We established the Duša djece /Children's Soul/ Solidarity Fund so that parents whose children need medical treatment abroad know that they are not alone at the most difficult moment.

We adopted a law protecting children when a parent fails to fulfill their child-support obligation.

Tens of thousands of our children receive free textbooks. We finance student transportation, assistants for children with developmental difficulties, healthcare, medicines and treatment for rare diseases.

None of these measures alone will change the demographic picture. But together they say something much more important. They show what kind of Republika Srpska we are building. We are building a Republic that loves life, values motherhood and fatherhood, the Republic that knows that a strong family is the foundation of a strong society. We are building the Republic confident enough to say that what we have accomplished so far is not the end, but the foundation for the next major step.

That step must be even more ambitious.

Increasing the birth rate, strengthening and stabilizing families, promoting family values, retaining young people and encouraging our people to return to Republika Srpska must be our strategic goals in the coming years. I particularly believe in the latter.

Generations of our people now live in Austria, Germany, Slovenia, Switzerland, Serbia, America, Australia and around the world. This is not only a demographic loss for us.

It is also our enormous potential. These people have not ceased to be ours simply because they now live hundreds or thousands of kilometers away.

Their families are here. Their homes are here. Their ancestors' graves are here.

They come here for holidays. They support their clubs here. Many of them still see this as the place to which they belong. The love for their homeland already exists. It is up to us to add a reason to return to that love. We are increasingly witness that return is not merely our hope for the future. It is already happening.

In recent years, I have met more and more families who lived abroad and then decided to return to Republika Srpska. I speak with people who had jobs and established lives in European countries but chose for their children to grow up here. To be closer to their parents, family and friends, to live in the environment to which they belong and where they want to build their future.

Every such family is important to me as confirmation of two things – first, that Republika Srpska is progressing and that what we have been doing for years is producing results, and second, perhaps even more importantly, that we have enormous room to do even more.

If people are already returning today because they see quality of life, security and a future for their children here, then our task is to create conditions so that tomorrow there will be thousands of such families.

That is why I do not see the return of our people as a romantic idea or a call for nostalgia. I see it as a realistic development and national goal of Republika Srpska. We cannot bring people back with appeals and slogans. We must build Republika Srpska worth returning to – a good job, a decent salary, the opportunity to start a business, an apartment or house that one can afford, a good kindergarten and school for one's children, modern healthcare, security, well-organised cities and municipalities, and a sense of a future here.

Then the question will no longer be merely how to retain people. We will ask how to bring them back. This is precisely where I see one of the greatest development opportunities for Republika Srpska over the next decade.

We are a small community, and that is why every person is immensely valuable. Every child who is born. Every young person who decides to stay. Every family that has a third or fourth child. Every one of our people who, after spending ten or twenty years abroad, returns and once again opens the door of their home here.

All of these are our victories.

Therefore, we must not reduce demographic policy to benefits alone. It is BAM 500 when a child is born and BAM 746 maternity allowance, but it is also the job of the child’s father and mother. A kindergarten. A school. A home. A hospital. A park. A safe street. The belief that ten years from now things here will be better than they are today.

And perhaps most importantly, it is a social climate in which family and children are viewed as a joy, not a burden. We must once again speak of family with pride. Of motherhood and fatherhood with respect. Of a third and fourth child with joy. Of a young person who stays in their hometown as a success. Of someone who has returned from abroad as a gain for the entire Republic.

We cannot prescribe happiness to people or decide for them how they should live. But we can build a society in which people can more easily achieve what most people naturally want – to love, to be loved, to start a family, raise children and know that their children will live well.

That is why I see the Srpska Loves You – Love Is Rights campaign above all as a message of optimism. It speaks about what we have done. But even more, it speaks about what we want to become.

We want Republika Srpska where more children are born. Where families are strong and secure. Where young people stay. Where our people return. Where no mother, father or child is left alone when times are difficult. And where we believe in tomorrow.

Because our people has never been a people without hope.

We know very well how much Republika Srpska is worth. We defended it and keep defending it. We built it and keep building it. We developed it and keep developing it. Today, after everything we have been through, we have the right to speak with much greater confidence than before about what we want Republika Srpska to be tomorrow.

Our goal for the future must be clear – Republika Srpska as a country of families, a country of children, a country where mothers and fathers are respected, our customs are preserved, and the Christian tradition on which our people have built their system of values for centuries is nurtured.

A country where love, responsibility, solidarity, respect for elderly and care for children are values that unite society and are passed from generation to generation.

A Republic in which we will rejoice at every new child, help every family that wants to grow, give young people a reason to stay and open the door to every one of our people who wants to return.

We are not starting from zero. Behind us are years in which we created institutions, built roads, schools, hospitals and kindergartens, increased family benefits, helped mothers, treated our children and created a safer and stronger Republika Srpska.

Now, on those foundations, we need to build a new stage of its development. To have more children. To have stronger families. To have our young people stay. To have our people return. For Republika Srpska to be a place where people live well, but also a place which they feel they belong to.

We created Republika Srpska so that we could be our own masters on our own land. We defended it so that it would be free. We built it so that it would be strong. And now our task is to make it the best place for our families to live and our children to grow up.

This is Republika Srpska I believe in. The Republic that endures because life is being born in it. The Republic to which people return. The Republic that has a future. Srpska loves you. Love is family.