Balkan Investigative Reporting Network
Bardh Shkreli, a journalist for BIRN Kosovo, has won a third-place award in November from the German Society for International Cooperation, GIZ and the Association of Professional Journalists of Kosovo for education reporting.
Shkreli’s story, “University of Pristina with no invention”, examines why the public university has not patented any innovations since its founding in 1970. The story appeared on BIRN Kosovo’s portal, GazetaJNK.
Romania’s national journalistic competition Superscrieri has given awards to Elena Stancu and Vlad Odobescu, both fellows this year of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence.
In a tough competition involving 222 entries, seven prizewinners were selected.
Stancu won the Special Prize for Coverage of Domestic Violence for an article published in Marie Claire Romania, about a young woman whose mother was a victim of domestic violence.
Odobescu won third place in the Portrait Category with his article The Return of Marius, a feature report about the reintegration of a former prison convict.
Earlier this year, Stancu was awarded another journalistic grant. She is one of the recipients of the 2013-2014 Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism.
Through this she will receive intensive training from leading mental health and journalism experts and a stipend to report on a mental health topic of her choice.
http://www.cartercenter.org/news/pr/mhj-fellows-2013-2014.html
She and the Romanian photographer Cosmin Bumbut will work on a multimedia project about the post-traumatic stress disorder in children exposed to family violence. For one year the team will examine the culture of education by violence in the Romanian families and society.
Eight journalists from Bosnia and Herzegovina, BIH, Croatia, and Serbia participated in a weeklong study visit to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, in October. The Tribunal’s Outreach Programme organised the visit in cooperation with BIRN BiH.
The journalists had an opportunity to speak with ICTY President Theodor Meron and Prosecutor Serge Brammertz. In addition to meetings with senior officials they attended the trials of Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic.
The presentations that followed focused on the role of the prosecutor and the defence in the adversarial legal system, the history and practice of investigations, witness protection issues, detention, and the ICTY’s cooperation with the regional media.
Speakers included Bob Reid, chief of operations for the Office of the Prosecution, Peter Robinson, Karadzic’s legal advisor, Peter McCloskey, ICTY prosecutor, Magda Spalinska, spokesperson for Registry and Chambers, Fraser Gilmour, deputy commanding officer of the ICTY detention unit, and Helena Vranov Schoorl, support officer from the victims and witnesses section.
BIRN Macedonia announces a call for journalists for an upcoming training session for investigative journalists.
The training programme is supported by the US Embassy in Macedonia, and is part of the Project for Investigative Journalism and Cooperation between Media and Civil Society, which is being implemented in the framework of the USAID programme for strengthening the independent media in Macedonia.
The invitation is restricted to journalists from Macedonia.
Click for more information about the application procedure, with details in Macedonian.
ПОВИК ЗА НОВИНАРИ
Обука: Процесот на истражувањето – од информација до истражувачка сторија
БИРН Македонија ги повикува сите заинтересирани новинари со најмалку двегодишно работно искуство, да се пријават на обуката за истражувачко новинарство која што ќе се одржи во Берово од 6 до 8 декември.
Оваа обука е организирана во соработка со Амбасадата на САД во Скопје и Проектот за истражувачко новинарство и соработка помеѓу медиумите и граѓанскиот сектор кој е дел од Програмата на УСАИД за зајакнување на независните медиуми во Македонија.
Обуката ќе ја води добитникот на Пулицеровата награда Џон Улман од Минеаполис, САД. Улман во својата кариера бил долгогодишен заменик уредник за истражувачки проекти во „Стар Трибјун“ и има освоено повеќе од 40 награди во областа на новинарството.
Обуката вклучува предавања за техники на интервјуирање при истражување, за истражувачкиот процес, како да се најде и произведе добра истражувачка сторија, етика во известувањето и за други корисни алатки при спроведување истражување.
Во рамките на обуката се предвидени и сесии за користење на Законот за слободен пристап до информации, како и за решавање на проблемите при пишување на апликација за истражувачка сторија.
Заинтересираните новинари е потребно да се се пријават со испраќање на кратка биографија на [email protected] најдоцна до 29 ноември. Сите пријавени ќе бидат известени за исходот на нивната апликација по електронски пат.
Работен јазик на обуката ќе биде англиски.
Бројот на учесниците е ограничен.
Ги очекуваме вашите апликации!
Participants in this year’s Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence will meet for their final seminar and awards ceremony in Zagreb, Croatia from December 11-14.
Ten journalists from across the region have spent the past few months investigating stories within the overall annual theme ‘Integrity’, tackling issues of corruption, media, politics and the legacy of war.
The Zagreb event represents the culmination of the journalists’ participation in the programme, when they will have the chance to present their work to the selection committee members who will vote for the top three stories.
The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on December 13, which will be attended by the Fellowship programme’s partners, selection committee members and Croatian media.
The winner will be awarded a cash prize of 4,000 euro, with the second and third place runners up receiving 3,000 euro and 1,000 euro respectively.
The final event in Zagreb will also feature meetings with important figures in Croatian media and politics, as well as a cultural programme.
This year’s Fellowship programme began in May in Vienna, where the fellows took part in career development training and fellowship orientation programmes. Each fellow was awarded a 2,000 euro bursary and a further 2,000 euro travel allowance.
As well as travelling to neighbouring Balkan states, thefellows also visited other EU member states including Greece, Czech Republic, Ireland, Britain, France, Germany and Belgium.
The fellowship programme aims to develop and support Balkan journalists reporting on complex reform issues. It was established by the Robert Bosch Stiftung and ERSTE Foundation in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.
During its EU membership negotiations, Serbia will be assessed on how well it has dealt with war crimes cases, European Commission official Pierre Mirel told a BIRN conference.
“The prosecution of war crimes before national courts was part of negotiations with Croatia, and it is now with Montenegro, and it will be for Serbia as well,” Mirel, the director for the western Balkans in the European Commission Directorate General for Enlargement, told the BIRN conference in Belgrade on Thursday.
“But we should note that transitional justice is more than just war crimes trials and it goes beyond courtrooms. Here I would stress the issue of missing persons. How can reconciliation take place if thousands are missing?” he asked.
Mirel told the conference, which focused on transitional justice in the context of Belgrade’s EU ambitions, that Serbia still needed to do more to address the legacy of the 1990s wars.
“One of the problems is that trials in The Hague didn’t lead to a wider debate in the society. And some political leaders participated in the glorification of [Hague] indictees as heroes,” Mirel said.
Transitional justice will not be a specific part of the talks about the rule of law and human rights reforms that Serbia has to make to win membership from Brussels, but some elements like war crimes prosecution will be discussed in negotiations about chapters 23 and 24 in the EU body of legislation, which deal with the rule of law and human rights.
“A number of areas which deal with transitional justice will be touched upon directly through these chapters,” Serbian deputy justice minister Cedomir Backovic told the conference.
Serbian chief war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic pointed out the importance of working with other ex-Yugoslav states to bring suspects to justice.
“Without regional cooperation, our work in prosecuting war criminals would be impossible. But it is important to say that we don’t have the support of [Serbian] institutions and media, unlike our colleagues who prosecute organised crime,” Vukcevic said.
“I am referring to the problems we have with units for witness protection and the police who investigate war crimes,” he added.
The witness protection unit, part of the Serbian police, has been criticised for allegedly intimidating witnesses instead of shielding them.
Speaking about common problems that the region is facing when it comes to prosecuting war criminals, Ivan Jovanovic from the OSCE Mission to Serbia outlined three main problems.
“First is the time that passed from the conflict, second is access to public documents and third is witness protection,” Jovanovic said.
In the part of the conference dedicated to the role of civil society in the upcoming EU negotiations, Jelko Kacin, the European Parliament’s rapporteur for Serbia, stressed the importance of civil society being part of the negotiations.
“The European Union is asking Serbia to enroll civil society as part of the negotiations with the EU, especially when it comes to the chapters 23 and 24, which will be opened first and closed last,” Kacin said.
Jelena Djokic Jovic from Zagreb-based civil rights organisation Documenta he conference also heard how a Croatian campaign group called Platform 112 managed to convince the government to include some transitional justice issues in Croatia’s EU membership negotiations.
“Here I am mainly referring to a new network of courts – four specialised courts which are now prosecuting war crimes,” Jovic said.
BIRN Serbia’s Aleksandar Djordjevic and Slobodan Georgiev took part in a special programme at Belgrade’s political science faculty focused on investigative reporting for students of journalism, and presenting BIRN’s experience in this area.
In the one-hour class, Georgiev and Djordjevic explained main challenges and principles of investigative journalism to the 20 students who attended.
Georgiev spoke about the starting points of every investigation and final goals of a story.
“Investigative journalism lies in every good story and it is not about sending someone to prison, it is about a good journalistic job,” he said.
Djordjevic spoke about several examples that illustrate how these principles work in practice by guiding participants through one investigative process. He presented possible online and offline sources and demonstrated techniques for checking information.
As part of its Balkan Transitional Justice project, BIRN is holding a one-day conference on November 14 in Belgrade to examine what part the issue of transitional justice will play in Serbia’s forthcoming membership negotiations with the European Union.
The first panel will examine two topics, ‘EU efforts and the Institutional Framework for Achieving Transitional Justice in Serbia’ and ‘Achievements and Obstacles in Transitional Justice in the Region’.
The panel will consist of Pierre Mirel, director for the western Balkans at the European Commission Directorate for Western Balkans, Cedomir Backovic from the Serbian justice ministry, Vladimir Vukcevic, Serbia’s chief war crimes prosecutor, Ivan Jovanovic from OSCE Serbia, Marijana Toma from the Humanitarian Law Centre, Jelena Jovic from Documenta, Maja Micic from the Youth Initiative for Human Rights and Erna Mackic from BIRN Bosnia.
The second panel will also tackle two topics, ‘The Role of Civil Society in Serbia’s Negotiations with the EU in the Field of Transitional Justice’ and ‘Monitoring of War Crime Trials’, and will include Ivana Cirkovic from the Serbian government’s Office for Cooperation with Civil Society alongside representatives of civil society and media.
The conference, entitled ‘Achievements and Position of Transitional Justice in Talks Between Serbia and the EU’, will be opened by BIRN’s regional director Gordana Igric.
The conference is part of BIRN’s Balkan Transitional Justice project, which aims to improve public understanding of transitional justice issues in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia.
The full agenda can be downloaded here.
BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina is making a film about people who have been missing since the 1990s war, inspired by a conference in The Hague last week hosted by the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP).
The documentary will deal with the worldwide challenges and different practices involved in the process of accounting for missing persons. It will also highlight the role of the ICMP in the identification process in BiH.
The film will feature interviews with some of the most prominent practitioners in the field, including forensic experts and rights campaigners.
Set to appear are Andreas Wigger of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Queen Noor of Jordan, Kathryne Bomberger of the ICMP, Ronald K. Noble of Interpol, Radwan Ziadeh of the Damascus Centre for Human Rights Studies, Jose Antonio Lorente of the Department of Forensic Medicine of the University of Granada, Olgica Bozanic of the Regional Coordination of the Family Association of Republic of Serbia, and Sister Consuelo Morales of Citizens in Support of Human Rights from Mexico.
The film’s production is being supported by the Civil Rights Defenders and the OSCE Mission to BiH. Its release is expected at the end of the year.
