BIRN Grantee Trains Kosovo Journalists to Research War Crime Archives

A BIRN grant recipient trained journalists in Kosovo how to explore the archives of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and domestic courts in ex-Yugoslav countries that deal with war crimes cases.

Amer Alija, one of 13 recipients of grants from the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network to create small projects based on the archives of the UN war crimes tribunal, held a workshop for young journalists in Pristina on Thursday about how to research Kosovo war crimes in court archives.

“Documents administered by courts provide many details and insights into historical events that researchers and journalists can use to tell the truth, using official documents and sources,” Alija, a legal analyst at the Humanitarian Law Centre Kosovo, told the journalists.

His workshop was divided into two sections: lectures on the history of trials for crimes committed during the 1998-99 Kosovo war, and training on using the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY’s database and the databases of Kosovo and Serbian courts dealing with war crimes cases from the Kosovo war.

Alija talked through the events of the Kosovo war, the forces involved and the difference between war crimes and crimes against humanity.

He explained that crimes related to the Kosovo war have been tried in five different types of courts including the ICTY, Kosovo’s domestic courts, Serbian courts, Montenegrin courts and the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, a hybrid court that exists within Kosovo legal system but is located in The Hague and is trying former KLA members.

He said that there are 11 cases currently ongoing in Kosovo’s domestic courts and three at the Specialist Chambers.

He also said that contrary to common belief and reporting in Kosovo’s media that such cases are unpunished, five people have been convicted of bearing responsibility for sexual violence during the Kosovo war.

In the second part of the workshop, Alija showed the journalists how to do research in the ICTY’s database of court documents that include indictments, testimonies, official state documents, photographs and other documents admitted in court.

He also provided documents and step-by-step guides for using the ICTY database and domestic courts’ and non-governmental organisations’ databases in former Yugoslavi countries.

Alija showed the journalists how, by opening an account for the ICTY database, they can find more information about specific massacres during the war or particular war crimes by reading the indictments of individuals who have been tried already and the evidence from their trials.

Nejra Mulaomerovic, programme associate at BIRN’s Balkan Transitional Justice programme, said that archives play an important role in ensuring that the past is properly documented.

“The archives themselves are not a guarantee of the non-recurrence of conflicts, but if they are used by various actors from different research and academic backgrounds, they can contribute to raising awareness and can be used as tools to spark dialogue and inspire others to continue their efforts to seek justice and truth,” Mulaomerovic said.

BIRN’s other grantees have been exploring topics such as gender-based violence, Roma war victims, wartime sexual violence, the experience of women in conflict and the role of photography in prosecuting war crimes.

 

 

Freedom of Information in the Balkans: No Access and no Progress

Regional public institutions still need to improve their records on freedom of information and their transparency and accountability. Institutional silence remains a widespread problem, a BIRN panel discussion heard.

Even though almost all Western Balkan countries have excellent written Freedom of Information laws, they are mostly on paper. State institutions still need to improve regarding Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, speakers from the region told BIRN’s panel discussion, “Freedom of Information in the Balkans: No political will, no access, no progress”, held on Wednesday.

Political will is as important as laws, and public authorities need to make more progress with FOI requests, agreed speakers at the event, at which BIRN’s annual freedom of information report was officially launched.

 Saša Dragojlo, a BIRN journalist from Serbia, told the panel discussion that the laws are good only in theory. „The key word is political will. In our societies, it is much more important than laws”, Dragoljo said. Although the new law Serbia implemented last year is an improvement, if public institutions do not answer FOI requests, journalists will submit fewer of them. They will try to gather information unofficially, and that is a danger, he told the panel.

Helen Darbishire, executive director for Access Info Europe, said political will is often an individual decision, which leads to different reactions from even the same institutions. „In some countries, we have seen progress. Journalists tend to ask for more controversial pieces of information, therefore, have different impressions than the rest of the public. That’s not the way it should be,” Darbishire said.

Elona Hoxhaj, General Director of the Right to Information in Albania, told the panel that, „although much progress has been made towards transparency, civil servants are still unaware of their obligation towards the press and the public, so they question the requests”. The Information and Data Protection Commissioner’s Office is actively working with the Albanian school of public administration.

The Agency for Personal Data Protection and Free Access to Information in Montenegro also helps public servants and journalists. But it is struggling to deal with more than 6,100 appeals, the Head of the Department for Free Access to Information said. „Some first-instance bodies don’t have enough money to have websites, so despite their goodwill, they are unable to publish public information”, Biljana Božić described the situation.

All Western Balkan countries have problems, the panel heard. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, there is a need for a strong, independent body monitoring the implementation of a new law submitted last year. In Kosovo, the local agency aims to raise awareness of public institutions that providing access to public information is obligatory.

In Serbia, one of the most significant problems is the so-called „silence of the administration”. „The common goal for all of us, both in the region and in Serbia, should be zero tolerance”, Serbia’s Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection, Milan Marinović, wrote in a statement sent to the panel.

According to BIRN’s annual Freedom of Information report, this institutional silence is one of the most critical problems in the region. Monitored institutions from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia continue to struggle with implementing their own Freedom of Information laws. They are failing to become more transparent and accountable to their citizens.

BIRN’s annual FOI report is part of the „Paper Trail to Better Governance” project, funded by the Austrian Development Agency.

 

 

Spheres of Influence Uncovered

BIRN Hub

This project aims to contribute to a better understanding of the roles that three key international players – the EU, Russia and China – have on the seven project countries’ economies. In the course of this, journalists from the seven countries – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Georgia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan – will map Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), coming from these three players and identify the main challenges and consequences for their countries. They will also produce investigative country-based and cross-border reports while their skills will be upgraded with a series of capacity-building activities.

Summary:

At the core of the project is the struggle for spheres of influence on the Eurasian continent, which has been going on between Russia, China and the EU for around a decade. Among other things, the project aims to identify Russian, Chinese and EU economic activities in these two broad regions, expose their consequences and downsides and inform the general public about its findings.

Political, economic and cultural ties with Russia, “inherited” from the Cold War, are still operative to varying degrees in these countries. However, the binding and integrating power of an economically weak, revisionist Russia, which relies above all on military strength, is clearly declining – and even driving away some former partners (Georgia).

The EU meanwhile is struggling to maintain its attractiveness because the demands that Brussels places on recipients of its financial support are high and often involve lengthy reform and adjustment processes that often cause frustration and disappointment among partners (Western Balkans, Georgia).

The main beneficiary of this frustration is China. By offering to finance large investments in long-awaited infrastructure projects, quickly and easily, it has found a willing audience in all the project countries. Although capital from China entails considerable risks and disadvantages for the recipient countries, the potential ecological, social and political consequences of cooperation with China in the recipient countries is barely publicly discussed.

Donor:

German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development

Main objectives:

 Objective 1: Strengthen the capacities of independent and public media in the project countries, as they are the main pillars of a critical public discourse on the effects of economic cooperation with China, Russia and the EU.

Objective 2: Increase skills and strengthen the capacities of independent and public media in the project countries to continuously inform a broad public with high-quality reporting about the background and consequences of international economic cooperation.

Objective 3: Increase the capacities of participating journalists to join cross-border projects and engage in data journalism.

Objective 4: Advance the reporting and publishing of complex investigative stories achieved through interesting and understandable preparation and a strategic public relations campaigns with a wide audience.

Objective 5: Increase the capacities of the participating journalists to become parts of international networks whose members support each other in researching and analysing global economic relationships.

Main Activities:

  • Hold several meetings and trainings throughout the project duration (in Tbilisi, Belgrade, Tashkent, Podgorica, and Sarajevo).
  • Organise and conduct online capacity-building workshops and sessions.
  • Work on a database and an interactive map to present the spread of FDIs in the project countries.
  • Produce country-based and cross-border long reads and investigative reports.
  • Develop curricula for self-study.

Target Groups:

  • The direct target group includes 25 journalists from the seven project countries who deal with questions of international economic cooperation either as freelancers or as permanent employees.
  • The indirect target group consists of two subgroups:
  • group of experts from diverse Non-Governmental Organizations (around 150 people involved in the project through trainings, researches and publications)
  • general audience in the participating countries.

Main implementer:

n-ost

Partners:

BIRN Hub

Anhor.uz, Uzbekistan

JAM News, Georgia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Society against Corruption in Montenegro

BIRN Hub

The aim of this project is to increase the accountability to citizens of Montenegro’s national and local governments, as well as public institutions, and empower the justice system and the rule of law.

Summary:

Corruption is the main obstacle towards establishing the rule of law in Montenegro and is significantly undermining its economy and appreciation of human rights. This has been outlined by many reports and policy papers, including the annual European Union reports that measure the country’s progress towards EU integration.

In 2020 the government was changed after three decades of one party in power, with the new majority making the fight against corruption a key priority.

But, more than a year since those elections, the results in the field of anti-corruption are either poor or missing, while political instability is affecting each segment of society. Citizens are more divided then ever, based on national, religious, political and other preferences. Trust in institutions is dropping.

Participation of civil society organizations (CSOs), especially community groups working at local level, in assessing the impact of gaps in reforms is lacking. Citizens are either poorly consulted by the government or excluded from designing and implementing anti-corruption activities. Public consultations are often organised in a way to discourage participation and recommendations made by CSOs are often rejected. Although on paper and in speeches the government supports civil society and its participation in policy development, in reality CSOs’ contribution is neglected. Media also have limited knowledge and skills to report on corruption and do not have developed relations with primary stakeholders – citizens and local CSOs.

This project will bring Montenegrin citizens closer to civil society and local media, and vice-versa. It will empower them to work together on identifying and reporting corruption, holding institutions accountable and demanding results, at the same time raising awareness of the damage of corruption, especially in the strategic areas of healthcare, education and the environment.

The project will also build the capacities of CSOs and local media to be active players in their communities, which will allow them to influence policies, laws and anti-corruption practices and so create a society with an empowered justice system and rule of law.

It aims to foster this collaboration through a multi-stacker approach but also through the active use of technology. The project will nurture a bottom-up approach – and empower those at local level on advocacy and, at an informative level – through CSOs and media – help citizens to demand change, influence politics, monitor and act as change-bringers in their communities.

Donor:

United States Department of State – Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor

Main objectives:

  1. Empower local media, civil society and citizens to be able to identify corruption in their communities, report it to responsible authorities and hold institutions accountable.
  2. Strengthen civil society’s and media’s capacities to report and counter corruption at national and local level to influence changes, with a special emphasis on the environment, education and healthcare
  3. Improve policies and/or laws through constructive engagement between civil society, government(s) and/or the private sector

Main Activities:

1.1: Conduct needs assessments of local CSOs and media;

1.2: Implement tailor-made trainings and mentoring sessions;

1.3: Develop and implement a digital tool for citizens’ reporting corruption.

2.1: Provide sub-grants to six local CSOs and six local media (12 in total);

2.2: Develop and publish anti-corruption stories based on inputs from citizens;

2.3: Develop and publish anti-corruption policy papers based on the needs of local communities;

2.4: Promote anti-corruption campaigns via mainstream and social media.

3.1: Organize workshops between media and local CSOs every five months;

3.2: Organize anti-corruption forums and gather at least 50 representatives of CSOs, media, private sector once per year, followed by adoption of joint recommendations for improvements, and at least 50 follow-up meetings with the decision makers;

3.3: Implement 18 community events related to concrete anti-corruption project activities, each reaching at least 10,000 citizens, or 200,000 in total;

Target Groups:

  • Civil society organizations, media outlets, journalists, local and central institutions and citizens of Montenegro

Main implementer:

BIRN HUB

Partners:

Civic Alliance and Eos Tech Trust

 

 

 

 

Freedom of Information in the Balkans: No access and no progress

Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, will present its annual Freedom of Information Report in an online event on Wednesday, October 19.

The panel, including representatives from the Freedom of Information commissioner’s offices from several countries in the region, will discuss main findings of the report: that politics in the Balkans has a significant influence on access to information.

The report is part of BIRN’s ongoing project, A Paper Trail to Better Governance, whose main aim is monitoring access to information and exposing wrongdoing through country-based and cross-border investigations.

Speakers:

Krenare S. Dermaku, Commissioner of the Information and Privacy Agency, Kosovo

Besnik Dervishi, Commissioner for the Right to Information and Personal Data Protection, Albania

Irma Hadžiavdić, Deputy Ombudsperson, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Biljana Božić, Head of Department for Free Access of Information, Montenegro

Cvetan Stanoeski and Makfirete Morina Sulejmani, lawyers, Agency for Protection of the Right to Free Access to Public Information, North Macedonia

Helen Darbishire, Executive Director, Access Info Europe

Shengyl Osmani, author of BIRN’s Freedom of Information in the Western Balkans report in 2021: “No political will, no access, no progress”.

Moderator of the event: Ivan Angelovski, BIRN Investigations Editor

Date and time: Wednesday, October 19., 1400 CET

Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82662905904?pwd=Z2dKZTJoeGo4RjB0Rytwck11VlUwdz09

The report will be available on https://bird.tools/publications/ after the official launch event.

 

 

BIRN Supports 28 Media Outlets in Engagement Journalism

Journalists and editors from 28 media outlets in six Balkan countries are being given financial and editorial support to engage their local communities in the reporting process.

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, launched a new round of support for media outlets across the Balkans in October 2022, continuing the regional Media for All project.

BIRN will provide editorial and mentoring support to journalists and editors from total of 28 media outlets from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.

The group of 28 media outlets was previously supported in 2020 and 2021 within the same project through training, grants, technical support and mentorship to enable engagement with local communities and enable citizens to participate in the reporting process, by suggesting topics, providing testimonials, documents and evidence.

BIRN’s support will now equip local media to further develop their skills in engagement journalism and raise their editorial standards, with a particular focus on storytelling, data analysis, verification and fact-checking, contributing to the fight against misinformation and disinformation.

The media receiving the support will continue to use the Engaged Citizens Reporting tool, ECR, which was developed by BIRN during the previous phase of the Media for All project.

Media outlets will receive support until the end of February 2023. They will also be able to carry on using the ECR tool after the project is complete, to ensure sustainability of engagement journalism methodology in the region and enable media to better answer the information needs of local communities on a long-term basis.

The project aims to achieve a level of relationships and standards in which media outlets and journalists report together with citizens, and not only about them.

The project intends to build on the results from the previous phase but also to help prevent the spread of and the susceptibility to misinformation and disinformation. It will continue to work towards the creation of high-quality, accurate and relevant content created with the community by using the ECR tool and with support from BIRN’s editors and journalists.

Community-engaged reporting, in which ordinary people’s voices are heard and unresolved issues are tackled, proved to be a game-changer, as shown by numerous examples from the previous project phase.

Citizens’ engagement in the reporting process has put additional pressure on local authorities and decision-makers to act on issues of concern. It has helped media outlets to listen to voices from the community while bringing innovation to their investigative reporting and newsrooms.

Journalists and editors who have already used the ECR tool say that it has transformed the way the media outlets communicate with their audiences, who feel empowered by helping shape the content of their own media.

“It has direct impact on mobilising communities to solve a problem, because we provide data … that they can rely on, and continue to seek their rights,” Dorjana Daka, editor of Albanian news website Informim, told BIRN in August 2022.

Informim investigated stories about the Roma community, whose members often do not have access to the internet and lack trust in journalists, but managed to engage them through ECR and community events.

BIRN’s manager for the Media for All project, Marija Vasilevska, said that BIRN continues to support the media outlets in the creation of quality content “required by citizens and for citizens”.

“This way we are bringing back trust in the media, but also increasing the audience of local media outlets. Moreover, we are giving voice to the voiceless, such as minorities and vulnerable groups of citizens to share information that can be placed on media outlets’ front pages, lobbying and advocating for real needs in society,” Vasilevska said.

This extension of the projects is built on successes from the previous phase. During the first phase of the project, 51 media outlets were supported, directly engaging more than 39,000 citizens in six countries through more than 300 different callouts for engagement, which resulted in more than 700 journalistic products in various formats, including articles, video, podcasts and multimedia content.

The Media for All project is being implemented in six countries in the region: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. The project is funded by the UK Government and implemented by a consortium led by the British Council together with BIRN, the Thomson Foundation and Intrac.

 

 

Enhancing accountability and memorialization processes in the Balkans by exploring war crimes archives and promoting fact-based narrative

BIRN Hub

The project aims to strengthen transitional justice mechanisms in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, and Kosovo through enhanced usage of courts’ archives and professional reporting on war crimes. Specifically, the project is intended to reinforce the role of local artists, journalists, researchers, and historians in becoming drivers of change in reconciliation processes in the Balkan region; also, to improve intercultural dialogue and guarantees of non-recurrence through enhanced usage of court archives for the creation of multimedia fact-based content, combating the disinformation and denial that are encouraged by mainstream nationalistic narratives.

Summary:

Although more than 20 years have passed since military conflicts in the Balkans ended, former Yugoslav countries have been slow to implement transitional justice mechanisms regarding human rights violations. In the past, stakeholders in the field of transitional justice in the Balkans were mainly focused on criminal justice, which had its foothold in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ITCY, and its successor, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. On completion of the work of the tribunals, domestic courts were to take over the prosecution of war crimes suspects.

However, the number of such trials is declining, and new indictments remain focused on low-ranking perpetrators. Although the few existing trials are noteworthy, and BIRN is closely monitoring and reporting on them, it is important to focus on other segments of transitional justice and link it with criminal justice efforts. In this context, when regional cooperation among local judicial institutions remains key to advancing accountability and ending impunity, BIRN aims to increase the awareness of the key stakeholders and the public about these processes.

Aside from ongoing trials, court archives are a repository of testimonies and evidence presented at earlier trials, which should be used to create fact-based narratives about wartime past. Archives from the ICTY and local courts in all former Yugoslav republics make this conflict one of the best documented in history. Unfortunately, however, most of the archives are not easily accessible; a considerable amount of essential material does not see the light of day.

BIRN has already implemented two projects supported by the Matra Regional Rule of Law Program. The first, “Accountability and regional cooperation in prosecuting war crimes in former Yugoslavia”, focused on criminal justice efforts and regional cooperation among local prosecutors’ offices. The second, “Shaping and promoting war crime trial narratives in the Western Balkans”, aimed to promote and strengthen criminal justice and guarantees of non-recurrence through regular, in-depth, high standard reporting on war crime trials, but also to promote and disseminate the archives of the international and local courts.

This project is a follow-up to these previous actions, expanding the work on court archives and memorialisation processes but also providing interested individuals with the opportunity to research archives from different and often complementary perspectives. This way, overall reconciliation processes are being reinforced by broadening the scope of independent professionals interested in becoming active in securing guarantees of non-recurrence.

Donor:

Matra Regional Rule of Law, The Netherlands

Main objectives:

Overall objective – Strengthen transitional justice mechanisms in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia and Kosovo through enhanced usage of courts’ archives and professional reporting on war crimes.

Specific objective 1 – Reinforce the role of local artists, journalists, researchers and historians in becoming drivers of change in the overall reconciliation processes in the Balkan region.

Specific objective 2 – Improve intercultural dialogue and guarantees of non-recurrence through enhanced usage of court archives for the creation of multimedia fact-based content combating disinformation and denial caused by mainstream nationalistic narratives.

 Main Activities:

  1. Produce and publish online 1,500 daily reports and analyses of war crime trials’ monitoring and transitional justice processes at all levels of the judiciary. The most important ones will be translated into BCMS and Albanian.
  2. More than 3,000 republications in local, regional and international media outlets.
  3. Publish at least five data-driven multimedia investigations into war crime cases.
  4. Artists, journalists and historians to produce at least 10 small projects using international and local court archives.
  5. Upload up to 20 multimedia pieces (essays, articles, photographs, video materials and archaeological research papers) to the Mass Graves Database.
  6. Update Mass Grave Database with small-size mass graves locations
  7. Hold one regional conference with up to 100 participants.
  8. Hold one archive workshop for youth, mentor 10 young people to produce 20 oral history videos and hold five exchange programmes.
  9. Develop tool for journalists, researchers, historians to more easily search court archives.

Target Groups:

Journalists, media, victims of war, researchers, historians, artists, academia

Main implementer:

BIRN Hub

Partners:

BIRN BiH

Project associates:

n/a

 

 

Spheres of Influence Uncovered

BIRN Hub

This project aims to contribute to a better understanding of the roles that three key international players – the EU, Russia and China – have on the seven project countries’ economies. In the course of this, journalists from the seven countries – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Georgia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan – will map Foreign Direct Investment, FDI, coming from these three players and identify the main challenges and consequences for their countries. They will also produce investigative country-based and cross-border reports while their skills will be upgraded with a series of capacity-building activities.

Summary: 

At the core of the project is the struggle for spheres of influence on the Eurasian continent, which has been going on between Russia, China and the EU for around a decade. Among other things, the project aims to identify Russian, Chinese and EU economic activities in these two broad regions, expose their consequences and downsides and inform the general public about its findings.

Political, economic and cultural ties with Russia, “inherited” from the Cold War, are still operative to varying degrees in these countries. However, the binding and integrating power of an economically weak, revisionist Russia, which relies above all on military strength, is clearly declining – or even driving away some former partners (Georgia).

The EU is meanwhile struggling to maintain its attractiveness because the demands that Brussels places on recipients of its financial support are high, and often involve lengthy reform and adjustment processes that often cause frustration and disappointment among partners (Western Balkans, Georgia).

China is the main beneficiary of this frustration. By offering to finance large investments in long-awaited infrastructure projects quickly and easily, it has found a willing audience in all the project countries. Although capital from China entails considerable risks and disadvantages for the recipient countries, the potential ecological, social and political consequences of cooperation with China in the recipient countries is barely publicly discussed.

Donor:

German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development

Main objectives:

Objective 1: Strengthen the capacities of independent and public media in project countries, as they are the main pillars of a critical public discourse on the effects of economic cooperation with China, Russia and the EU.

Objective 2: Increase skills and strengthen the capacities of independent and public media in project countries to continuously inform a broad public with high-quality reporting about the background and consequences of international economic cooperation.

Objective 3: Increase the capacities of the participating journalists to join cross-border projects and engage in data journalism.

Objective 4: Advance the reporting and publication of complex and data-heavy stories achieved through interesting and understandable preparation and strategic public relations campaigns with a wide audience.

Objective 5: Increase the capacities of participating journalists to become parts of international networks whose members support each other in researching and analysing global economic relationships.

Main Activities:

  • Several offline meetings and trainings throughout the project’s duration (in Tbilisi, Belgrade, Tashkent, Podgorica, Sarajevo).
  • Capacity-building measures/workshops online.
  • Work on the database and an interactive map to present the spread of FDIs in the project countries.
  • Production of country-based and cross-border long reads and investigative reports.
  • Development of curricula for self-study.

 Target Groups:

  • The direct target group includes 25 journalists from the seven project countries who deal with questions of international economic cooperation either as freelancers or as permanent employees.
  • The indirect target group consists of two subgroups:
  • group of experts and multipliers from NGOs and science(around 150 people involved in the project through further training measures, research and publications)
  • general audience in the participating countries.

Main implementer:

n-ost

Partners:

BIRN Hub

Anhor.uz, Uzbekistan

JAM News, Georgia

 

 

 

 

BIRN’s Museum Reporting House Presented at International Journalism Week in Greece

Nejra Mulaomerović, Programme Associate at BIRN’s Balkan Transitional Justice Programme, was invited to IMEDD’s International Journalism Week in Athens to speak about BIRN’s new museum.

Nejra Mulaomerović, Programme Associate at BIRN’s Balkan Transitional Justice Programme, presented BIRN’s new museum, Reporting House, dedicated to media workers who covered the war in Former Yugoslavia at Incubator for Media Education and Development – IMEDD’s International Journalism Week in Athens.

IMEDD, a Greek non-profit organization with a mission to support transparency and independence in journalism and promote meritocracy and excellence in the field, organizes the International Journalistic Week in Athens, where international organizations, journalists, and the student community meet to exchange experiences, opinions and knowledge.

Mulaomerović spoke to an international audience about BIRN’s initiative to create the first regional museum in the Balkans “built” by journalists and dedicated to them.

To ensure that transitional justice efforts are heard by a wider population, in 2021 BIRN started a bold initiative to create the first independent, non-profit regional museum in the Balkans that would bring the comprehensive story of the break-up of the former Yugoslavia and its aftermath to the attention of as many people as possible.

Guided by constant reevaluation and examination of the existing archives within BIRN and outside the network, a new direction emerged that unmasked a need for a distinct and reshaped approach to education and research within the transitional justice process, but also to role of media in it, in particular to disinformation and propaganda, but also the role that quality journalism plays.

“Journalists are engaged in creating the collection of the museum. We want to celebrate media workers who covered the war. A lot of people are not addressing the war trauma in our region. Reporting House would be a place where this topic will be discussed together with other issues of conflict journalism and transitional justice,” Mulaomerović said in her speech.

The museum will offer compelling, fact-based narratives on the break-up of Yugoslavia, the role of media propaganda in the war, war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, the life of journalists and media workers during the war and the overall challenges of war reporting in the 1990s in parallel with present conflict journalism challenges.

The goal of the museum will go beyond serving as a heritage venue of wartime history; despite the tragic events, BIRN wants to celebrate journalists, photographers and media workers who courageously reported the war and its aftermath, exposing atrocities and serious human rights abuses while maintaining the highest professional standards – despite the deadly risks they faced.

 

 

 

 

Greater Internet Freedom

BIRN Hub

The project aims to contribute to the overall exposure and mainstreaming of issues of Internet freedom and digital rights through partnering with local organizations from the Balkans and Moldova in monitoring and analyzing trends pertaining to freedom of expression, privacy and freedoms online. It involves organizing regional events/workshops for key stakeholders and supporting region-wide capacity to address and respond to technical and policy-level attacks on Internet freedom.

Summary:

The Greater Internet Freedom (GIF) program is a four-year, global program that works to preserve an open, interoperable, reliable and secure Internet – and by extension, protect individuals, civil society organizations, media outlets and vulnerable groups who rely on it to realize fundamental freedoms. Through its dual objective of enhancing digital security for civil society and media and increasing citizen engagement in Internet government, GIF supports a diverse range of elements that impact Internet freedom.

The core of GIF’s approach centres on putting regional and local organizations at the forefront of this work. By enabling local and regional partners to lead this work, GIF helps local actors to build stronger trusted networks with peer organizations in their regions and around the world – and gain technical expertise from expert international organizations and share lessons learned.

Donor:

USAID

Main objectives:

 Increased Citizen Engagement in Internet Governance.

 Main Activities:

  1. Working with local advocacy partners, to promote and advance policies to protect an open, interoperable, reliable, and secure Internet
  2. Identify and build relationship with key stakeholders to safeguard internet freedom, IF, at regional and national levels
  3. Expand and mainstream IF issues regionally, by training and mentoring human rights CSOs to integrate internet freedom advocacy into their advocacy programs.
  4. Coordinating with local advocacy partners to analyze and respond to policies that risk closing civic space
  5. Raise awareness among regulators, policy makers, service providers / private sector, and government actors on challenges and opportunities to uphold internet freedoms
  6. Pursue locally and regionally relevant innovative approaches to spreading digital rights awareness, including working with universities to expand curricula; documentation of violations by both private and public sectors, etc.
  7. Sharing best practice responses to the above approaches
  8. Play a leading role in regional and international Internet governance forums

Target Groups:

  • General public
  • CSOs
  • Journalists
  • Human rights defenders

Regional partner for Western Balkans:

BIRN Hub

Implemented by:

Internews

Local Partners [2020-2024]:

BIRN Albania (Albania), Center Science and Innovation for Development (Albania), Youth Centre KVART (BiH), CA Why not (BiH), Levizja FOL (Kosovo), Kosovar Centre for Security Studies (Kosovo), Open Data Kosovo (Kosovo), Independent Journalism Center (Moldova), Helsinki Committee for Human Rights (N. Macedonia), IMPETUS (N. Macedonia), Metamorphosis (N. Macedonia), Da se zna (Serbia), Belgrade Centre for Human Rights (Serbia), Belgrade International Law Circle (Serbia). SHARE Foundation (Serbia).