Unique Master Citizen Number (, JMBG / , , , EMŠO) is an identification number that was assigned to every citizen of former Yugoslav republics of the SFR Yugoslavia. It continues to be used in almost all of the countries that were created after the dissolution of Yugoslavia – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia use it in its original form, while Croatia has switched to a new identification number called the Personal Identification Number (, OIB).
History
The JMBG was introduced in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on January 8, 1977 and applied to all citizens born before then and alive at the time. All six republics passed a law on the Unique Master Citizen Number.
Although the Republic of Croatia continued to use the JMBG after gaining independence in 2002 the official name of the number there was changed to Matični broj građana (Master Citizen Number), acronym MBG. Advocates of the right to privacy argued that JMBG was a piece of personally identifiable information that needed to be protected by information privacy law, mostly because it was unique and it included the person's date of birth. When the law to that effect was passed in 2003 it was no longer possible to use JMBG on identity cards, driver's licenses and similar documents. Even though law hid MBG from personal documents, various institutions (e.g. banks, schools, insurance companies ...) continued to demand citizens to give their MBG while signing various contracts, since MBG was natural unique identifier of each citizen. Seeing flaw of hiding MBG, on January 1, 2009 Croatia passed a new law that introduced a different unique identifier called the Personal Identification Number (, OIB). The OIB consists of 11 randomly chosen digits and has been assigned to all Croatian citizens, companies registered in Croatia and foreign nationals residing in Croatia. Although the OIB is in use, the MBG law remains in effect, and the MBG number is still issued. It is used for data coordination among government registries. MBG no longer appears on Croatian identity cards since 2003, instead OIB does, since 2013.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2001 the official name of the number was changed to Jedinstveni matični broj (Unique Master Number), although acronym JMBG is still in use.
Composition
The number is made up of 13 digits in a form "DD MM YYY RR BBB K" (whitespaces are for convenience; digits are written without separation) where: DD – day of birth
MM – month of birth
YYY – last three digits of the year of birth
RR – political region of birth (for persons born before 1976, political region where they were first registered) 01-08 – foreign citizens without citizenship of former Yugoslavia or succeeding countries (foreign citizens that receive citizenship also receive a 'regular' JMBG, not this 'foreigners only' one) 01 – foreigners in Bosnia and Herzegovina 02 – foreigners in Montenegro 03 – foreigners in Croatia 04 – foreigners in Macedonia 05 – foreigners in Slovenia 06 – foreigners in Central Serbia 07 – foreigners in Vojvodina 08 – foreigners in Kosovo 00 and 09 – naturalized citizens which had no republican citizenship 10–19 – Bosnia and Herzegovina 10 – Banja Luka 11 – Bihać 12 – Doboj 13 – Goražde 14 – Livno 15 – Mostar 16 – Prijedor 17 – Sarajevo 18 – Tuzla 19 – Zenica
20–29 – Montenegro
20 – (not in use) 21 – Podgorica, Danilovgrad, Kolašin 22 – Bar, Ulcinj 23 – Budva, Kotor, Tivat 24 – Herceg Novi 25 – Cetinje 26 – Nikšić, Plužine, Šavnik 27 – Berane, Rožaje, Plav, Andrijevica 28 – Bijelo Polje, Mojkovac 29 – Pljevlja, Žabljak
30–39 – Croatia (no longer exclusively used) 30 – Osijek, Slavonia region 31 – Bjelovar, Virovitica, Koprivnica, Pakrac, Podravina region 32 – Varaždin, Međimurje region 33 – Zagreb 34 – Karlovac, Kordun region 35 – Gospić, Lika region 36 – Rijeka, Pula, Gorski kotar, Istria and Croatian Littoral regions 37 – Sisak, Banovina region 38 – Split, Zadar, Šibenik, Dubrovnik, Dalmatia region 39 – Hrvatsko Zagorje and mixed 41–49 – Macedonia 41 – Bitola 42 – Kumanovo 43 – Ohrid 44 – Prilep 45 – Skopje 46 – Strumica 47 – Tetovo 48 – Veles 49 – Štip
50–59 – Slovenia (only 50 is used) 60–69 – (Citizens with temporary residence)