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 JMBG was removed from
identity cards,
driver's licenses and similar documents. In 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. 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 ==