Balkan Investigative Reporting Network
PARTNER
The Czech Centre for Investigative Journalism was founded in 2013 by group of Czech journalists.
It does cross-border investigative journalism projects, trains investigative journalists, and addresses the need for local journalism to follow new media trends and standards.
BIRN’s Jelena Cosic was speaker on a panel entitled ‘Reviewing Europe’s Regulations on Arms Export Control: Can Germany lead by example?’, which took place on November 7 in Berlin.
The topic of panel was arms exports from Europe that end up in Syria, Yemen and Mexico, and whether Europe’s regulations on arms exports are enough to prevent war crimes and human rights violations.
The topics were discussed within the context of Europe’s regulations on arms exports, the EU Common Position.
Panellist Radhya Almutawakel, chairperson of Mwatana for Human Rights in Yemen, presented cases of exported European weapons that are used in the Yemen conflict, while Sara San Martin expert from Centro de Estudios Ecuménicos from Mexico explained how Germany exported Heckler & Koch weapons to a different end-user than one one that was declared.
The moderator was Roy Isbister, team leader for arms units at the Saferworld organisation in London.
Cosic spoke about the risks of arms exports being diverted and ending up in Syria and Yemen, but also the misuse of international regulations on arms exports. The key findings came from investigations on arms exports that BIRN has published in recent years (link to http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/page/balkan-arms-trade).
The organisers of the event were Saferworld, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and PAX, Netherlands.
BIRN Serbia has submitted its shadow report to the EU Delegation in Serbia as a contribution to the compilation of next European Commission country report on Serbia.
The BIRN Serbia shadow report focuses on negotiations for Chapter 23 of the EU acquis, which covers the judiciary and human rights, particularly the section on freedom of expression, offering insights and an alternative narrative on state of progress in this area.
The shadow report puts special emphasis on freedom of expression and media pluralism issues as a precondition for overall democratic dialogue in the country.
BIRN Serbia found that the constant shrinking of media freedoms and freedom of expression and absence of a social, political and economic setting conducive to the development of professional and sustainable media sector is a matter of concern, influencing the country’s overall democratic capacity.
The shadow report also calls for changes related to media legislation and the cessation of pressures on media by state bodies.
The report is a result of BIRN Serbia’s overall engagement in the field of media development and media freedoms, but also as part of activities under the project ‘Public Money for Public Interest’ supported by the EU through the IPA Civil Society Facility instrument.
Follow this link [in Serbian] on our project site to find out more.
BIRN Hub
The purpose of the Technical Assistance programme is to support the national public service media (PSM) of the Western Balkans in the development of long-term reform strategies for better management, accountability and financial sustainability.
Summary
The main outcomes to be achieved are to establish European standards with regard to funding models, the election and functioning of governing bodies; to design editorial guidelines and long-term strategies including internal management reforms; to develop and implement action plans for setting up integrated newsrooms; to introduce mechanisms for co-producing programmes and news on selected topics (e.g. investigative journalism) as well as for the regional exchange of digitised archive materials.
Donor
European Commission – DG NEAR D.5
Main Objective
The project aims to revitalise the region’s public broadcasting sector and bring new confidence to the key stakeholders involved.
Specific Objectives
The project has three specific objectives: firstly, it aims to reestablish European standards and promote best practice at the six public service media organisations in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, with a particular focus on helping them to achieve financial autonomy from the state and greater accountability to the public.
It works on seeking consensus on the principles and practice for sustainable funding models as well as on securing agreement on fair, transparent and accountable procedures for electing the members of governing bodies.
The project also works to generate synergies between the six broadcasters by initiating a new phase in ongoing reform processes and helping to formulate long-term strategies.
In addition, the programme is focused on the improved implementation of editorial policies and complaints mechanisms, which in some cases exist on paper only.
It will also support efforts to establish integrated newsrooms, to streamline newsgathering and production processes.
A further aspect to the project is work in the field of management reform, developing long-term strategies and mentoring their roll-out across multiple departments.
This will be complemented by an initiative to equip regulators with the skills to conduct or commission reliable surveys which will give programme-makers a better insight into audience needs.
The third objective of the technical assistance programme is to expand cooperation in programme-making between the six public service media organisations, ensuring that they can pool resources and share audiovisual materials in a more effective way.
Main Activities
The project goals will be achieved by building the capacity necessary to produce in-depth investigative reports as well as high-quality programming for children and young people.
The project also seeks to introduce new interactive formats which optimise the potential for audience engagement.
In addition to this, a regional platform will be created for sharing archive material between the broadcasters, enriching factual programming and encouraging further collaboration.
The training and mentoring programme led by BIRN addresses some of the shortcomings inherent in mainstream media across the Western Balkans – low levels of professional skills, an absence of continued mid-career training, and indirect or direct outside influence which prevents the broadcasting of stories which conflict with the interests of local power-brokers.
Target Groups
The primary target group are the six PSBs in the Western Balkans, and the secondary target groups are the ministries and parliamentary committees dealing with media policy, regulatory bodies, self-regulatory bodies and relevant NGOs dealing with the freedom of the media.
Main Implementer
International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)
Partners
BIRN Hub, European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Austrian public broadcaster ORF, the Office of the Eurovision News Exchange for South-East Europe (ERNO), European Federation of Journalists.
DONOR
The European Commission (EC) is the EU’s executive arm. It takes decisions on the Union’s political and strategic direction.
The European Commission represents the interests of the EU as a whole. It proposes new legislation to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, and it ensures that EU law is correctly applied by member countries.
The Commission’s other main roles are to set objectives and priorities for action, manage and implement EU policies and the budget, enforce European law (jointly with the Court of Justice), and to represent the EU outside of Europe.
The EC currently supports the following BIRN Hub programmes:
The documentary ‘The Dark Shadow of Green Energy’ by film-maker Dragan Gmizic, co-produced by BIRN Serbia, Al Jazeera Balkans and WWF Adria, has been nominated for an award at the Belgrade International Green Culture Festival ‘Green Fest’, in the Serbian film category.
‘The Dark Shadow of Green Energy’ follows Irma Popovic Dujmovic, a WWF Adria activist, on the road through Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro, discovering how the regional plan for the mass construction of small hydropower plants creates multiple new problems instead of solving them.
The destruction of the natural environment, people’s resistance against small hydropower plants and the corruption involved in their construction are some of the issues covered by the film.
The documentary was aired on Al Jazeera Balkans, and will be screened at the Free Zone film festival in Belgrade on November 12 at 11 am, The Cultural Centre Of Belgrade.
DONOR
Founded in 1940, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund advances social change that contributes to a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world.
In the Western Balkans, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) has worked since 2001 to achieve restorative justice after the devastating conflicts of the 1990s, to build civil society institutions, and to increase government accountability, especially on matters of environmental concern. It makes numerous grants to organisations working to prepare the Balkan nations to meet the requirements for membership of the European Union.
The Fund focuses on Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Bosnia and Herzegovina to help them complete the process of integration into the EU. The interdependence among the countries, common challenges they face, and the potential they possess together as a subregion of the European Union present a unique opportunity for successful integration. The Fund supports civil society initiatives that advance collaboration and enhance the capacity for sustainable development and enduring peace in the region.
BIRN Hub
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund has been an institutional donor to BIRN Hub since 2009.
BIRN Kosovo
The RBF currently provides general support to BIRN Kosovo, in backing efforts to improve practices, performance, transparency, and accountability in governance. It has supported the organisation though projects and general support for a decade.
Web: https://www.rbf.org/
DONOR
The Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) is a political foundation with a focus on civic education programmes promoting freedom and liberty, peace and justice. The KAS has 16 regional offices in Germany. Its offices abroad are in charge of over 200 projects in more than 120 countries.
The BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting has been organised in cooperation with the KAS’s Medienprogramm Südosteuropa/Media Program South East Europe since 2012. The Summer School enhances the reporting skills and journalistic standards of journalists from the Balkans and beyond, training 20 journalists from the Balkan region and 10 international journalists each year.
After BIRN Serbia reported on ruling party officials working illegally at the Medical College in the town of Cuprija, one of them, Aleksandar Martinovic, reported his income from the college, admitting he works there.
Аleksandar Martinovic, one of the officials from Serbian ruling Serbian Progressive Party who has an illegal contract with Medical College in Cuprija, as a Ministry of Education inspection has confirmed, reported his salary from the college to the Anti-Corruption Agency for the first time after BIRN’s article was published.
BIRN Serbia published the article ‘Cuprija: Political Employment at Medical College’ on October 23 about officials from the Serbian ruling party who work at the college.
Several months earlier, BIRN asked the college about these contracts, but its director, Hristos Aleksopulos, responded that “everything is legal”.
An inspection by the Ministry of Education found that all the contracts are illegal and that the college is obliged to terminate them due to the lack of proper documentation for their employment.
However, two of them – Aleksandar Martinovic and Darko Laketic – are still on the Medical College’s list of teaching stuff for the new school year.
Martinovic, the head of Serbian Progressive Party’s parliamentary group, reported his salary as 60,000 dinars, with a start date of October 1, after BIRN’s report about him working at the college.
However, documents show that Martinovic has been working there much longer.
Beside his salary from the college, Martinovic has five more salaries from the state budget – a total of 264,000 dinars per month.
Another Serbian Progressive Party MP, Darko Laketic, reported his salary from the college for the new school year to the Anti-Corruption Agency, as he has for the past few years. However, Laketic is also among those whose contracts are to be terminated.
After BIRN published the report, there was a discussion in parliament about it, on the initiative of an opposition MP.
Martinovic and another member of the Serbian Progressive Party, Vladimir Orlic, who was also working at the college, rejected an official document from the Ministry of Education about their unlawful jobs.
At the same time as Martinovic and other Progressive Party members got their contracts, several employees of the college were laid off after their temporary contracts expired and were not renewed.
The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Albania launched its monitoring report on transparency of courts on October 30, 2018.
This monitoring report assesses the transparency of all courts in the country with respect to the information categories that these institutions make public through various means of communication with citizens.
The findings aim to encourage a willingness and readiness among judicial institutions to increase their level of transparency, as well as serve as a base study for further progress assessments.
For this purpose, Albania’s Constitutional Court and 38 courts that are part of the local judicial system were monitored on 36 indicators deriving from the legal framework that is currently in force.
The monitoring was conducted by combining three different methods of data collection: on-site monitoring in each court; online monitoring through court websites; and via requests for information submitted to them.
More information available here.
The whole report is available here.
