News and Events Archives - Page 197 of 264

BIRN Serbia holds public debate on health in Serbia

BIRN Serbia organised a panel discussion in Belgrade on March 13 about introducing a better system of protection of patients’ rights as a part of its ‘Monitoring Policies of the Government of Serbia’ project in the fields of the economy, health, education and the fight against corruption.

Tanja Maksic, project coordinator at BIRN Serbia, said that the results of the project’s monitoring showed that the election campaign promises that have been fulfilled so far are those relate to healthcare availability, expanding the list of free medicines and financial support to pregnant women.

“When it comes to the law on the protection of patients’ rights, it was not explicitly announced during the election campaign, but it was mentioned in the prime minister’s speeches. Also, I want to remind you that Serbia is the only country in the region that has not adopted this law,” said Maksic.

She added that the draft law on the issue defines in detail the rights of patients, but not their protection or any potential sanctions against those who violate them.

“The draft law on the protection of patients’ rights will be available to the government of Serbia by the end of March or early in April, while the law should be adopted by parliament during the spring session,” said Perisa Simonovic, state secretary at the health ministry.

Radmila Ivanek, special adviser to the health minister, said that several months of public debate had helped to improve the text of the legislation.

“In addition to the existing 11 rights, eight new rights are incorporated in the new law. Among them are the right to preventative measures, the right to quality health services, the right to a second opinion, the right to patient safety, and the rights of children in hospitals,” said Ivanek.

The topic of the patients’ rights protector and its relocation to local government under the new legislation caused most debate during the panel discussion. The law says the position will be relocated from healthcare facilities to local municipalities and that its name will be changed to patients’ rights advisor.

The Serbian ombudsman’s office, which supports the adoption of the law, pointed out some of the problems surrounding the current situation.

“The problem was that the protector, while working in health institutions, was also performing a numerous of other legal issues, therefore it’s important that this will be someone whose main activity will be protection of patients’ rights. It is also important to regulate the whole procedure, because in practice we were faced with situations in which its role was limited to forward complaints and responses among patients and doctors,” said Gordana Stevanovic, a representative of the ombudsman’s office.

But Marina Mijatovic, director of the NGO Legal Scanner, disagreed with the new name because the role of the position is not just to advise patients but to protect their rights as well.

The panel discussion was part of a project entitled Development of Mechanisms for Monitoring and Measurement of Government Policy, conducted under the auspices of the British Embassy in Belgrade.

Award-Winning UK journalist Joins Fellowship Jury

Paul Lewis, special projects editor at the British daily newspaper The Guardian, has joined the annual jury for the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence.

He recently received the European Press Prize’s Innovation Award for spearheading a major research project into the causes and consequences of the riots in England in summer 2011.

Lewis lectures across Europe about the use of social media in journalism and teaches a masterclass in investigative reporting. You can watch his TED talk here. Last year, he trained journalists at BIRN’s investigative reporting summer school.

He was named Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2010 and won the 2009 Bevins Prize for outstanding investigative journalism. He previously worked at the Washington Post as a Stern Fellow. In 2012, he was nominated for both Reporter of the Year and the Orwell Prize for Journalism. He was also the winner of the ‘Best Twitter Feed’ award at the Online Media Awards.

He joined the Guardian as a trainee is 2005 after studying at Cambridge University and Harvard University. He lives in London and can be followed on Twitter: @paullewis

The Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence is an annual bursary for cross-border investigative and long-form reporting. Ten journalists are picked by the fellowship’s selection committee each year to receive funding, training and professional support to conduct fresh, in-depth investigations. The independent selection committee is made up of regional and international journalists, editors and prominent Balkan experts. It consists of six permanent and one annual member, selected in accordance with the annual topic. This year’s Fellowship programme topic is Integrity.

You can find out more about the project on its website: http://fellowship.birn.eu.com/en/page/home

More than 100 Applicants for Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence

This year’s competition for the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence programme closed on March 5.

After receiving more than 100 applications, the BIRN team has now launched preparations for the selection process and eligibility checks, after which members of the selection committee will begin the process of choosing the journalists to participate in this year’s programme. The criteria for selection are based on the quality of applications and the journalistic merits of the candidates.

The results of the committee’s deliberations will be announced on March 29 on our website, fellowship.birn.eu.com, while all candidates will be individually informed about the results of the annual competition.

Each year, ten Balkan journalists are selected to take part in the programme. Successful applicants receive a bursary, an additional travel and research allowance of up to €2,000 and the chance to participate in a seven-month programme of professional development and excellence in reporting. Experienced regional and international editors provide hands-on support throughout.

Fellows must be available to attend seminars and editorial sessions during the course of the programme. Participants are expected to complete 2,000-word stories, which will be subject to international-style editing processes and will showcase top-quality journalism with a cross-border reporting angle. The final articles are disseminated in local languages, English and German and are republished in the Balkans and beyond.

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, alongside its partners, the Robert Bosch Stiftung and ERSTE Foundation, would like to thank all the applicants for their interest in the programme and wish them the very best of luck.

BIRN Serbia Conducts Debate on Education in Serbia

Public discussion about education in Serbia is currently limited and the impact of educational policies is not matching up to expectations, it was concluded at a debate dealing with education policy organised by BIRN Serbia on February 27.

“Nobody expected a breakneck shift in the field of education from the new government, but it feels that the issue remains on the fringes – there is a mismatch between expectations and the way in which this very important subject is treated in public,” said Dragana Zarkovic-Obradovic, the director of BIRN Serbia, during the debate entitled ‘How to Write Education in Serbian’.

Vlasta Matejic, one of the creators of the strategy which ensures that the state allocates 4.5 per cent of its budget to education, said it was “untrue that the Serbs are an educated nation” – a fact which is one of Serbian society’s biggest contemporary problems, he said.

According to Matejic, the development of education in Serbia depends on the courage of the state: “If we are bold enough, we will have better education, but if we allow politics to mix with education, we will have education as usual, and that’s not good,” he said, adding that the ultimate outcome is likely to fall somewhere between these extremes.

Matejic warned that there are many illiterate people in Serbia, and that “academic people do not even read their own works, nor [their] publications”.

Radivoje Mitrovic, state secretary at Serbia’s education ministry, said that education is not just a matter for the ministry and the state, but for all – from nurseries to universities, from pupils, students and parents to the economy and local governments.

Mitrovic said that it is very important that education is seen as an opportunity and a tool to overcome the current crisis.

A survey conducted by BIRN Serbia showed that education was very little represented as an issue in last year’s election campaign; it was mostly raised by the Serbian Socialist Party but absolutely sidelined by the Serbian Progressive Party and United Regions of Serbia coalition.

The panel discussion was part of a project entitled Development of Mechanisms for Monitoring and Measurement of Government Policy conducted under the auspices of the British Embassy in Belgrade.

BIRN BiH Director Interviewed in Bosnia’s Dani Magazine

Anisa Suceska-Vekic, director of BIRN in Bosnia and Herzegovina, gave an interview to weekly magazine Dani, which was published on February 22. In the interview, Suceska-Vekic speaks about BIRN BiH and its work, as well as her family, as she is the mother of three small children.

“What is characteristic of our team is that, despite the fact that we deal with serious issues, we perform our job happily and invest maximum efforts [in it]. The atmosphere in the office (or on Skype, as we are often at different locations) and between the team members is always positive,” Suceska-Vekic said.

“My working day in the BIRN office is never a typical one and it never ends after nine working hours. Most of my days are marked by stress, but at the end of each day I am pleased with what has been done,” she said.

Besides being a director of BIRN in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which follows the processing of war crimes and other activities related to ensuring the transparency of court processes, as well as investigative reporting in the field of coming to terms with the past, Suceska-Vekic is a mother of three children, one of whom was born recently.

“Our small family consists of six members, with equally numbered male and female squads: Zaria (five years), Pegy (bearded collie, two years) and my humble self are in the female team. Our most important guys are Dan (three), Lun (two months) and dad Dejan,” she told the magazine.

In the interview, Suceska-Vekic also speaks about the rights of women in Bosnian society, as well as the possibilities for balancing private life and work.

Download the full inteview as a PDF file in BCS language

BIRN Director Speaks About Balkan Media on Berlin Panel

BIRN’s regional director Gordana Igric spoke in Berlin on February 25 on a panel about reporting in south-east Europe and the pressures on journalists that exist in all the countries in the region.

Igric talked about political pressures on the media in the Balkans, noting that political parties try to influence the media elsewhere too but the phenomenon is more pronounced in countries which are suffering economically.

“I don’t see any sources for mainstream media to be independent,” she said, referring to a discussion about the impact of financing on media independence.

Igric also said that one of the problems of the media in the Balkans is ownership, which is often not as transparent as it should be.

Ljiljana Zurovac of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Press Council said that the media laws in her country were very good, but what was lacking was their proper implementation. She agreed that one of the problems for the media in the Balkans is the lack of money.

But Goran Milic of Al Jazeera Balkans said that the lack of money is not always a problem because a large number of media have managed to develop strong audiences.

The panel was a part of an alumni meeting of past participants in Economic and Political Reporting From South-East Europe journalism training courses organised by the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The three-day meeting brought together six groups of journalists who had been on the course at different periods for panel debates, discussions and workshops.

UNDP Praises BIRN’s Transitional Justice Reporting

The United Nations Development Programme in Kosovo published a new report called ‘Perceptions on Transitional Justice’ on Tuesday, outlining the current problems that Kosovo is facing over reconciliation, missing persons, reparations and other key post-conflict issues including media coverage of war crimes topics.

The UNDP report analysed the role of media in reporting on transitional justice issues, comparing the current situation with a previous survey published by the organisation in 2007.

“Although print and electronic media throughout the region still continue to reproduce nationalistic narratives, it is evident that respondents [to the latest survey] can clearly make a distinction between media that are professional in researching and reporting on war crimes,” the report said.

“New media cooperation initiatives in the Western Balkans that cover transitional justice issues have become more visible after the 2007 survey. For example, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network and Balkan Insight have managed to cover these topics successfully,” it underlined.

The report, based on a public opinion survey of 1,250 people from all Kosovo’s ethnic groups, said that past grievances were still obstructing progress on reconciliation within society.

The survey’s authors interviewed 850 ethnic Albanians, 200 ethnic Serbs and 200 people of other ethnicities in Kosovo.

Conference Criticises “Discriminatory” EU Labour Curbs

Speakers at a conference in Bucharest have attacked temporary restrictions that prevent Romanian and Bulgarian citizens from working freely in several EU countries.

The curbs are due to remain in place until their maximum legal limit expires at the end of 2013 – seven years after the two so-called “A2 countries” joined the bloc.

“Seven years no longer mean restrictions, they no longer mean differentiation – they mean discrimination,” said Vasile Puşcaş, Romania’s chief-negotiator with the EU in 2000-04.

Romanian MEP Renate Weber told the conference, organised under the auspices of the Balkan Fellowship of Journalistic Excellence, that her country had expected the curbs to be lifted sooner.

“When we joined the EU, we agreed to these long-term restrictions, hoping they would be lifted long before the deadline,” she said.

She argued that this would have been logical as European Commission studies had “demonstrated the benefits [to other EU economies] of the Romanian and Bulgarian labour force”.

However, she said, the restrictions had become an “electoral weapon” in the domestic politics of the countries that had imposed them.

Several EU nations – including the UK, Germany and France – have enforced laws that aim to restrict Romanian and Bulgarian migrants to specific sectors of their labour markets. Under EU rules, any such curbs must be lifted by the end of 2013.

The looming deadline has prompted speculation in the media that some governments may look for ways to extend the curbs.

However, speakers at the conference said any talk of prolonging the restrictions was misinformed.

Luminita Odobescu, a senior official from the Romanian Prime Minister’s Chancellery, said her government was confident that its European partners would lift the curbs in January 2014, in accordance with the EU accession treaty.

Weber added that Romania would challenge any member state that “invented reasons or statistics” to extend the restrictions on A2 citizens’ right to work in the EU.

The conference, held on February 13 at Bucharest’s Novotel Hotel, looked at the effects of the curbs on A2 workers as they entered their seventh year. Participants in the debate included Romanian government officials, academics, foreign diplomats and trade union officials.

The conference was prompted by an investigation by reporter Sorana Stanescu that showed how labour curbs have left Romanian builders vulnerable to exploitation in the UK. The investigation argued that the restrictions were in some respects counter-productive, harming indigenous workers by driving down wages and safety standards, as well as depriving the British economy of tax revenue. Stanescu’s report was produced as part of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, an annual bursary for investigative and long-form journalism.

Governments in the UK and elsewhere argue that the labour curbs have protected the domestic workforce and restricted immigration from eastern Europe.

However, speakers at the conference questioned if the restrictions had been effective.

Sean Bamford, a migration expert with the UK’s Trade Unions Congress, said there was “no evidence that Romanians and Bulgarians have threatened the jobs of British nationals”.

“They have however left Romanian and Bulgarians open to extreme forms of exploitation.”

Bamford said the British workforce’s problems were caused by “casino capitalism” and the failure of government regulation, rather than by migration from eastern Europe.

Dumitru Costin, the president of the Romanian National Union Block, said the labour restrictions had benefitted “employers, some employment agencies, lawyers, insurance companies… and last, but not least, those politicians who lack solutions and vision”.

Sociologist Dumitru Sandu said most Romanians in future would choose to migrate to Germany, rather than the UK, because its economy was stronger.

Background information

The Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence was established in 2007 by the Robert Bosch Stiftung and ERSTE Foundation, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), to promote incisive, cross-border reporting. The first prize-winner of the 2012 edition was Romanian journalist Sorana Stănescu, for her investigation: “Cheap, and Far from Free: The Migrants Building Britain”.

http://fellowship.birn.eu.com/en/fellowship-programme/cheap-and-far-from-free-the-migrants-building-britain.

BIRN’s Balkan Transitional Justice Team Holds Donors’ Meeting

The Balkan Transitional Justice team held a meeting in Belgrade on February 7 to present the project’s first year activities and results to donors.

At the close of the project’s first year, the BTJ team presented to its donors what had been achieved in terms of editorial coverage, online publishing and radio and television production. The team also outlined the project’s future targets and plans, among them a series of major regional investigations and the release of a documentary film and television series.

Lode Desmet, the director and producer of the upcoming film, in which six young people testify about their lives in the Balkans, showed sequences from the documentary for the first time. During the afternoon session, there was a debate on current transitional justice issues and in-house briefings from six BTJ reporters across the Balkans who explained the major themes and challenges for journalists working on the subject in their respective countries.

“Despite various challenges, we managed to reach the public in the region and provide crucial information. Twenty years after the wars in the Balkans, people still need answers and the public is entitled to receive information about war crimes trials. BIRN’s aim is to distribute necessary information supporting reconciliation among communities, but also to raise questions related to facing the past in the Balkans,” BIRN Project Manager Anisa Suceska Vekic said at the meeting.

During the first project year BTJ has achieved the following results:
•             Established, trained and developed a regional network of six transitional justice reporters
•             Developed a unique online written and audio archive of war crimes trials and analysis, with 1,160 published articles on transitional justice issues
•             Attracted more than 300,000 page views for the BTJ website
•             Gathered more than 13,000 followers on social networks
•             Finished filming the TV documentary
•             Released nine episodes of the ‘Roads to Justice’ radio programme
•             Recruited 100 radio stations in the region to broadcast nine episodes of the radio programme

The meeting was also attended by experts from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe OSCE, who actively contributed to the debate.

The Balkan Transitional Justice programme is funded by the European Commission, the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland and the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Bucharest Conference To Probe EU Labour Curbs

A conference in Bucharest this February will discuss the impact of working restrictions on Romanian citizens in the EU, following an investigation by Sorana Stanescu that won the top prize in the 2012 Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence.

A panel of experts – including senior politicians, trade union officials and academics – will consider how the labour curbs imposed by several EU members on Romanian migrants have affected their economies and the rights of their workers.

The panelists will also look at the political context within which these transitional measures were imposed.

In the UK, an ongoing debate over immigration and EU membership has been fuelled by the government’s announcement that it will be lifting the labour restrictions at the end of 2013, in accordance with EU rules.

The conference, entitled “Six Years of Working Restrictions for Romanians on the EU Labour Market”, is due to take place on February 13 at Bucharest’s Hotel Novotel.

Speakers at the event include Renate Weber, MEP; Luminiţa Odobescu, a state counselor in the Romanian government; Vasile Puşcaş, Romania’s chief negotiator with the EU from 2000 – 2004; Dumitru Sandu, a sociologist at the University of Bucharest; and Sorana Stănescu, a journalist with TVR.

Sean Bamford, an expert on migration policy with the Trades Union Congress, one of the largest confederations in the UK, will be joining us to discuss the particular case of the working restrictions imposed on Romanians in the UK.

The conference is organised by the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence. Romanian journalist Sorana Stănescu won the Fellowship’s first prize in 2012 for her investigation “Cheap, and Far from Free: The Migrants Building Britain” . Her report exposed how Romanian and Bulgarian construction workers in the UK are more likely to be exploited as a result of the restrictions.