Author: birnEU

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Austrian public broadcaster ORF and the Office of the Eurovision News Exchange for South-East Europe (ERNO) are the other members of the consortium.

The project is being implemented because public service media in the Western Balkans are at a crossroads. They urgently need to embrace an audacious reform agenda and adapt to a rapidly changing media environment or they run the risk of becoming irrelevant.

The project aims to revitalise the region’s public broadcasting sector and bring new confidence to the key stakeholders involved.

It is responding to the stark imperative to rebuild public trust in institutions which are still highly vulnerable to political interference and which appear to be increasingly disconnected from their audiences.

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 will work to seek consensus on the principles and practice for sustainable funding models as well as securing agreement on fair, transparent and accountable procedures for electing the members of governing bodies.

The project will also work to generate synergies between the six broadcasters by initiating a new phase in ongoing reform processes and helping to formulate long-term strategies.

As a part of this, the programme will facilitate 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 of the project will is to continue 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.

This 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 will also seek 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 programme led by BIRN will address 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.

BIRN’s e-book, entitled ‘Kosovo Specialist Chambers: From Investigations to Indictments, published on October 31, includes expert analysis, interviews and archive reports that trace the history of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers from the initial Council of Europe investigation into wartime and post-war crimes by Kosovo Liberation Army fighters to the establishment of the new court to try them in The Hague.

Ahead of the first indictments, BIRN compiled its extensive archive on the subject into a comprehensive guide to how the court will work, what are its main challenges and what the key players have to say about the allegations and the forthcoming prosecutions.

The e-book can be downloaded free of charge in English, Albanian, Serbian and Macedonian.

“The establishment of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers has been marked by controversy – the court is seen as biased in Kosovo because it targets one ethnic group, while in Serbia it has been greeted as the last hope for justice for Kosovo’s Serbs. In this heated environment, we believe that this e-book can be a valuable tool for everyone who has been following this tortuous road towards justice,” said the book’s editor, Marija Ristic, director of BIRN’s Balkan Transitional Justice programme.

“We also hope that it will contribute a better understanding of the complex issues involved in bringing people to justice for the crimes of the wartime past – one of the core values of BIRN’s work in the area of transitional justice,” she added.

Although based in The Hague, the Specialist Chambers is legally part of Kosovo’s judicial system, but independent from the Kosovo judiciary and staffed by internationals, while all decisions and appointments related to the court will be made by the European Union.

The Specialist Chambers will have jurisdiction over crimes that occurred between January 1, 1998 until December 31, 2000, and that either were committed or commenced in Kosovo, meaning it can also prosecute crimes committed in Albania, as many of the prisoners who were taken away by the Kosovo Liberation Army were detained in camps in northern Albania.

It will hear cases arising from the EU Special Investigative Task Force report which said that unnamed KLA officials would face indictments for a “campaign of persecution” against Serbs, Roma and Kosovo Albanians believed to be collaborators with the Belgrade regime.

The alleged crimes include killings, abductions, illegal detentions and sexual violence

The SITF report was commissioned after the Council of Europe published an inquiry in 2011 which alleged that some senior Kosovo officials, including current President Hashim Thaci, were responsible for various human rights abuses.

Thaci strongly denied the allegations, and since he become president in February this year, he has publicly supported the establishment of the new court.

For the past 17 years since the war ended, the international community has been administrating justice in Kosovo, but its results have been poor – fewer than 20 final verdicts in war crimes cases. Serbia has prosecuted seven cases related to the Kosovo war.

However, it was believed that the Kosovo prosecution couldn’t handle sensitive cases against high officials, which was one of the reasons why the international community decided to establish the new court.

To download the e-book, click here.

To download the pdf versions, click here.

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The media organisations included the Centre for Independent Journalism, The Association of Independent Media, the Higher School of Journalism and the Centre for Journalistic Investigations.

“With some of the Balkan countries having been through similar transitions, BIRN Hub believes that Moldova can be seen in this context in cultural terms too, not just in terms of the former Soviet space”, Petar Subotin, BIRN Regional Development Officer explained.

Moldova has been going through important political, geopolitical and social developments over the past decade, which need to be properly understood by an international audience in a regional context.

The country is on a path towards EU accession, but it is also troubled by a frozen conflict with the separatist authorities in Transnistria and faces large-scale youth migration, while media freedom is under increasing threat.

Moldova is under-reported in the international English-language media and BIRN, by partnering with local media organisations and supporting in-depth and investigative reporting, wants to give it more coverage, and to allow international and regional audiences to understand the country’s dynamics.