Category: News and Events

At the ceremony in Limassol, Cyprus, Tahmiscija received third prize in the category Outstanding Contribution to Peace for the articles Focus on War Crimes Verdicts Leaves Victims Feeling Disappointed and More Than Ten Million for Monuments in the Decade Lost to Memorialisation and Reparations. 

Accepting the award, Tahmiscija said that as the only journalist from Bosnia and Herzegovina — or the Balkans more widely — it was a great honour to attend the event along with finalists from all over the world, and it was a particular honour to win third place.

“This recognition and award are not just personal; they represent the courage of people whose stories we tell and the responsibility we carry as journalists,” she said. “I am grateful to everyone who has supported my work, and I believe this is additional encouragement to continue reporting on topics that contribute to peace and unity.” 

Tahmiscija also pointed out that journalism has the power to build understanding, keep the truth at the centre and give a voice to those who need it most, with the hope that such topics will have more and more space in the media.

In her award-winning journalism, Tahmiscija reported that more than 1,100 people have been convicted of war crimes since the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina but that victims and families have ultimately ended up disappointed. This is due to prosecutors refusing to file charges against higher-ranking perpetrators, the fragmentation of complex investigations, slow trials, a lack of strategy in their approach, politicisation and a lack of support for witnesses.

In her second award-winning text, Tahmiscija reveals how more than 5.5 million Bosnian marks have been allocated from local budgets in recent years for the construction and maintenance of monuments to civilian and military war victims, bringing the total amount spent on memorialisation to more than 10 million Bosnian marks in the past decade. She questioned how much this and other public spending has truly helped to create a systematic approach to transitional justice processes and to ensure an approach that remains focused on victims and their families.

Both stories are part of Detektor’s series or articles dedicated to transitional justice issues. 

The Fetisov Journalism Awards also have categories for Contributions to Civil Rights, Outstanding Investigative Journalism and Excellence in Reporting on Environmental Protection Issues.

This year’s jury consisted of Ricardo Gutierrez, Julianne Schultz, Kaarle Nordenstreng, Milica Pesic, Pravit Rojanaphruk, Tony Sadownichik, Torry Pedersen, Zaffar Abbas and Eva Merkacheva. 

The awards promote universal human values such as honour, justice, courage and nobility through examples of outstanding journalists around the world, noting that “their service and dedication contribute to changing the world for the better”.

The category for Outstanding Contribution to Peace rewards a series of texts with anti-war themes that have made an important contribution to peacebuilding and promoting the idea that human life is of the greatest value. According to the Fetisov website, the nominated stories focused on issues of international disarmament, reduction or ending of national or international conflicts, and support for national and international communities that maintain peace.

Tahmiscija has been a journalist at Detektor since 2014. In 2019 she was shortlisted for the Fetisov Journalism Awards for a series of articles on transitional justice processes and the rights of victims of war crimes, as well as their families in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

She received the Srdjan Aleksic Award in 2020 in the Nominees Chosen by Journalists category for articles about the challenges facing marginalised groups in Bosnian society. In 2022, she received special recognition from UNICEF for her contribution to the promotion and protection of children’s rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

As part of the Detektor team, she also received the European Press Prize Special Award for 2020 for “efforts and success in securing justice for war crimes victims”, for long-term professional and continuous reporting on the most sensitive topics. 

In 2022, Detektor journalist Haris Rovcanin received second place in the Fetisov Journalism Awards in the category for Outstanding Contribution to Peace. That was for a series of four articles, two of which were co-authored by Albina Sorguc, who was part of the BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina team at the time.

Detektor journalists Nino Bilajac, Enes Hodzic, and Irvin Pekmez are co-authors of a broadcast episode with CU SENS, a Moldovan media organisation, about Russian camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. Together with two other episodes from CU SENS, they’ve been nominated by the Friends for Friends Foundation – a Romanian non-profit organisation focused on media work, social impact, education, and creativity – for an award in the categories of investigative and TV journalism.

The journalists’ video investigation is being considered as one of the best pieces of media content published in the Republic of Moldova during 2025.

Pekmez explained that cooperation with the Moldovan media organisation CU SENS and the journalist Malvina Cojocari resulted in the publication of two joint investigations accompanied by TV shows in summer 2025. One was published on Detektor.ba, the other was published simultaneously on the CU SENS website. 

“We feel particular satisfaction that the Moldovan version of the investigation, supported by the information obtained by Detektor journalists during several months of work on the topic primarily carried out in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, has been recognised as an important journalistic work that contributes to an objective understanding of the problem of the harmful influence of the Kremlin on the two countries,” Pekmez said.

The nominated investigation reveals that between July and September 2024, at least eight Moldovan citizens were trained in Russian camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina on how to use weapons and drones with explosive devices. The plan was to incite unrest in Moldova as part of mass riots organised by unknown structures under Kremlin control.

Among the recruiters were individuals involved in vandalising buildings in Paris in 2023. Some of the instructors and coordinators are connected with the Russian Wagner paramilitary group.

The winners will be announced in Bucharest at the Superscrieri awards ceremony in May, along with other honorary and special awards.

As announced by the Friends for Friends Foundation, out of more than 300 applications, 53 works published during 2025 have been selected by a jury composed of 22 media experts across nine competition categories: journalism debut, local media, TV and video journalism, investigative journalism, feature writing, thematic journalism, innovation, interview, and civic influencers.

One reason why Katarina enrolled at the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Belgrade was because she didn’t know then what she wanted to do for a living.

“I studied international politics, which gave me a broad education in several fields related to social sciences. That suited me perfectly while I was figuring out what I wanted to become,” she says.

“Just before joining the MA program in Peace Studies, I realised that transitional justice was the field I wanted to explore further. Peace Studies definitely showed me the direction I wanted my career to take,” Katarina adds.

After completing her studies, she worked at the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) in Belgrade for almost three years before joining BIRN BiH.

“My position was in outreach for HLC, as well as coordinating the REKOM process. That was actually my first contact with BIRN BiH, as we were receiving press clippings related to transitional justice topics from the former Yugoslavia — and the majority of articles from BiH were BIRN BiH court reports,” she recalls.

“Just a few months after I left HLC, I got a call from the former BIRN BiH director asking if I would be interested in joining the team. Within two weeks, I moved to Sarajevo.”

But when she started to work at BIRN as a Project Officer in 2014, she didn’t know what to expect. Her relocation to a new country, city and job happened in less than two week – a challenge in every sense.

“I was excited about everything: exploring a new environment and taking on new tasks one by one. Very quickly, my role became more like that of a project manager than a project officer, as I was responsible for the whole project portfolios,” she recalls.

“When I joined BIRN BiH, transitional justice was the main and only field we worked on. Within the next year-and-a-half, we were already covering topics such as corruption, terrorism and the rule of law. It felt like BIRN BiH’s growth was mirroring my own, and I loved that process. It set standards from the very beginning – that we, as an organisation and I as an individual, must always strive for more. That’s still the case today,” Katarina explains.

Her professional path led her to the Head of Programmes position. Since this is a new role, which no one held before, Katarina created the Terms of Reference for the position herself.

“The idea was to have one person responsible for planning and overseeing all projects, ensuring they align with the organisation’s strategic goals. Personally, I want to make things a bit easier for the editorial, finance, and executive leadership teams by assisting them however I can. We’ll see how this role develops, but I know I’m 100-per-cent ready for new challenges, and I’m truly grateful for this opportunity,” she says.

BIRN BiH has three main programmes that have evolved over the years: transitional justice, rule of law and foreign influence. Transitional justice, Katarina’s favourite, has remained BIRN BiH’s core focus.

“We are still the only organisation reporting on every war-crime trial related to BiH, which makes our archive invaluable,” she notes.

“In recent years, we’ve developed several databases and documentary films that have taken on lives of their own, such as The Lives Behind the Fields of Death and Samir Mehic Bowie – Letters from Srebrenica, which has been screened across Europe.

“At the end of last year, we updated our database of court-established facts about the war as well as a guideline document for history teachers, which is being integrated into school curricula in several cantons, which is one of the most important things BIRN BiH ever achieved,” she adds.

The second programme, which is becoming increasingly relevant, is on foreign malign influence in BiH. “We’ve produced several investigations that have had a major public impact and prompted reactions from institutions,” she says.

“For example, our journalists uncovered ways of recruitment in the Russian army and revealed that two Russian diplomats, expelled from European countries after the invasion of Ukraine, were accredited in Russia’s diplomatic mission in BiH — a story that drew international attention,” Zrinjski notes.

When it comes to the rule of law, BIRN BiH’s reports have prompted dozens of investigations by prosecutors’ offices and even verdicts in serious crime cases.

“We’re also the only organisation reporting on disciplinary proceedings against members of the judiciary. Recently, after a tragic tram accident in Sarajevo that claimed one life, we discovered that the tender documentation for tram maintenance didn’t require relevant experience – an example of how our journalists uncover systemic issues,” she says.

“I can confidently say BIRN BiH has become a respected organisation, both domestically and internationally, and is now a key player in monitoring and reporting on Bosnia’s most important social and political issues,” Katarina adds.

If she had to explain what BIRN BiH represents to someone unfamiliar with it, she would summarize it in its mission statement: “In our relentless pursuit of truth and justice, we stand as guardians of democracy, ensuring that the voices of the voiceless are heard and that the lessons of history are never forgotten.”

“This reflects the core drive behind our work. Although it’s often emotionally challenging and demanding, the satisfaction we feel when we see the impact of our work is priceless,” she says.

“Our greatest strength, besides the amazing professionals at BIRN BiH, is the trust we’ve earned from many different groups – from victims and their families to partner NGOs, fellow journalists, the international community, and even public institutions that see us as a trustworthy partner in our shared mission to improve life in BiH,” Katarina thinks.

However, she believes that there is still room for improvement.

“My mantra is that we can always do better. No matter how good we are, if we relax, we create space for mistakes. That’s why we constantly work to improve, to grow, and to find new ways to present our work. It’s a joint effort by many people at BIRN BiH, and I do my best to make these processes as smooth as possible,” Katarina says.

Some things make her most proud, such as how BIRN BiH continues to touch people with their stories, by motivating them to speak up, share, and trying to make a difference.

“I’m also incredibly proud of how important BIRN BiH has become. I truly believe that if we stopped working tomorrow, the impact on Bosnian society would be profound. It might not be visible immediately, but in the long run, our critical and constructive presence would be deeply missed,” Katarina reflects.

For all young people who would like to work at BIRN, she has one piece of advice: “Be prepared to work hard.”

In her personal life, she thinks she’s the same person privately as she is at work – with the same ambition and dedication to the people and things she loves.

“Nothing compares to spending time with my family; that’s when I’m most relaxed and happy. When I need to clear my head, I grab a basketball and shoot hoops at a nearby court,” she concludes.