Tag: BiH

The exhibitions of the Srebrenica Memorial Center and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIRN BiH) – “From Words to Violence: Lives Behind the Fields of Death” and “Legacy of Hope After the Srebrenica Genocide 1995: The Journey of a New Generation,” originally presented in 2025 to mark the 30^th anniversary of the genocide, will reopen at the United Nations’ headquarters in New York.

Prepared last year for the 30^th anniversary commemorations, these exhibitions will for the first time be presented together this July in the exhibition space at UN headquarters.

The first part of the exhibition offers insight into the genocide against Bosniaks committed in Srebrenica in July 1995 through photographs of everyday objects that testify to lives violently interrupted, families permanently separated, and the consequences of hate speech and indifference in the face of hatred.

The second part presents the stories of eight young people who were children in 1995 or who were born after the genocide. Their stories and photographs bear witness to human resilience and the transformative power of love despite unimaginable loss. They highlight a new generation that preserves memory and fosters a culture of empathy and peace.

Chaloka Beyani, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, told Detektor that it is crucial to continue telling the story of Srebrenica to preserve the memory of the victims, support survivors’ testimonies, and contribute through storytelling to the prevention of future crimes.

“That is precisely why it is important for these two deeply moving and personal exhibitions to be presented again, this time together, at the United Nations’ headquarters, offering visitors and delegations a comprehensive account of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide – so that they may know, learn, and remember,” he said.

In his view, artistic reflection “provides us with space to confront painful memories, transform them into something that connects us as human beings, and use them for education and prevention.

“I am aware that these exhibitions touch on painful and traumatic experiences. However, they serve a higher purpose – to spare future generations from the same pain and trauma. We are united in achieving that goal,” Beyani added.

Hasan Hasanovic, head of the Oral History team at the Srebrenica Memorial Center, said it is extremely important that these exhibitions are presented again this year for the education of visitors interested in the Srebrenica genocide.

“The Memorial Center and its partners, including BIRN, demonstrate the capacity to produce such important content at a high level on the most significant platform in the world,” he said.

Denis Dzidic, Executive Director of BIRN BiH, noted that the fact these two exhibitions are being presented again at UN headquarters, this time as a unified whole, shows how important it is to continue conveying the story of Srebrenica through human experiences and testimonies.

“We owe the greatest gratitude to the survivors and the families of victims who entrusted us with their stories, personal belongings, and memories. Their willingness to speak has ensured that the lives of their loved ones are not reduced to mere numbers and statistics, but are remembered as the stories of real people—their families, dreams, and everyday lives,” Dzidic said.

The exhibitions, he added, remind us that prevention begins with understanding, listening and a willingness to confront the consequences of hatred and dehumanization.

“Our task is not only to preserve the memory of the past but to ensure that survivors’ experiences become part of the education of future generations. Only in this way can the testimonies we have collected continue to serve as both a warning and a call to responsibility,” he said.

Last year, the exhibitions were opened at UN headquarters, as previously reported by Detektor.

The project “Lives Behind the Fields of Death” began in October 2020, when 100 testimonies of genocide survivors were recorded. These are now part of the permanent exhibition, along with objects donated by survivors for permanent preservation in a memorial room opened at the Memorial Center in February 2022. Following positive reactions, the project continued with the recording of another 100 oral histories.

The combined exhibition will be open from July 17 to August 28 in the exhibition space at UN headquarters, which is free and open to the public.

by Dzana Brkanic

‘Facing Srebrenica: Views from the Besieged City’ opened at the Srebrenica Memorial Centre on Tuesday, presenting photographs from Dutch UN peacekeeping troops that depict everyday life in the wartime enclave – as well as numerous people whose lives violently ended during the July 1995 genocide of Bosniaks by Bosnian Serb forces.

The exhibition, which opened ahead of the annual genocide commemoration on July 11, is the first outcome of a joint project between the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands Institute for Military History, BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Srebrenica Memorial Centre.

The project has so far collected 12,000 private photographs taken by members of the UN Dutch Battalion who were stationed in Srebrenica between February 1994 and July 1995, offering a rare visual insight into everyday life in the besieged town.

The photographs show a place where movement was restricted and everyday supplies scarce, but also where life didn’t just stop.

“They depict Srebrenica’s life and culture in the toughest days – sport, art, resistance, but unfortunately also hunger,” BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina’s director Denis Dzidic said at the opening of the exhibition.

The director of the Srebrenica Memorial Centre, Emir Suljagic, said that the photographs complement the permanent collection at the centre, which aims to inform and educate the public about the genocide in which more than 7,000 men and boys were killed.

“We only have photographs of about half of the victims of the genocide, and it is our great hope that this way, through these photographs, we will find a greater number of others,” Suljagic said.

The design and development of this innovative digital tool, through the technology of augmented reality (AR), enables the marking and documentation of places of suffering in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was fully financed by the European Union with 290,000 KM.

At the launch, the director of BIRN Bosnia, Denis Džidić, emphasized the importance of using modern technologies in memorialization efforts, especially in order to make memorialization more approachable to younger generations.

“Through an innovative approach, we wanted to move the story forward, to younger generations, to show them how the memorials should look like in reality. In this app, the content is also composed of court-established facts and virtual elements, but also witness testimonies from all locations,” Džidić explained.

The opening address also highlighted the importance of creating an inclusive and fact-based approach to memorialization. Karel Lizerot, Head of Good Governance at the Delegation of the European Union to Bosnia and Herzegovina, told the participants that he was both personally and professionally proud of this project, adding that there is still room to work further on transitional justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“In Bosnia and Herzegovina, we support the memory culture and enable the victims, their families, individuals to go back to facts, locations and events that are court-established, so this application is important not only for Bosnia and Herzegovina but also to its path towards the European Union. Transitional justice is one of the key areas that Bosnia and Herzegovina needs to deal with on this path,” Lizerot said.

The application enables users to access virtual monuments at more than 50 unmarked sites of war crimes throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina via augmented reality, thereby symbolically marking and occupying in the digital space locations that have not received official markings.

In addition to AR content, the application contains narratives about each location based on court-established facts, video testimonies of survivors and family members of the victims, photographic and archival materials, as well as an interactive map that connects the places of suffering into a unique digital space of memory.

In this way, users may gain a new understanding of the events of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina through a combination of facts, personal stories and multimedia content.

The findings of two strategic documents dealing with memorialization in Bosnia and Herzegovina were also presented at the conference. Lejla Gačanica presented an analysis of the legal framework for memorialization, while Eldin Hadžović spoke about existing initiatives and good practices for marking places of remembrance throughout the country.

Gačanica outlined that memorialization is starting to be seen as the fifth pillar of transitional justice indicating why and how we should preserve the memory of events from the past. That is, how do we memorialize what happened and how past events affect reparations and speaking the truth, guaranteeing the prevention of such crimes from being committed again.

“Memorialization must not be a unified narrative that suppresses everything else, but a space where different perspectives are acknowledged. Everyone has their own perspective on what happened, but with full respect for the facts without any relativization and, of course, with full respect for the war victims,” ​​Hadžović said.

A special focus of the event was the panel discussion, “Memorialization through the process of accession to the European Union”, where participants discussed the role of the culture of memory, transitional justice and dealing with the past in the context of the European integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Panelists stressed the importance of developing memorialization policies that contribute to social dialogue, reconciliation and the protection of human rights.

Amer Đulić, a camp survivor and president of the Association of Detainees from Stolac, recalled that, back in 2017, they had submitted a request to Bosnia’s Council of Ministers to allocate space for a memorial room to murdered wartime camp inmates – but had never received a response.

He stated that, a year ago, they also initiated the memorialization process through the detainees’ association and non-governmental organisations in order to have a memorial centre, not to tell the story of one group of people but of all groups and their suffering in the war.

He called the new memorialization application “a story that touched me so much and that is so good”.

Many of his fellow former camp inmates from Stolac have now left the country, he said, but now “they will have the opportunity to get some information, because our younger generations no longer read the books we write and they don’t watch TV. What they want are cell phones, what they’re looking for, they’ll be looking for inside their phones,” Đulić said.

The presentation of the application is part of a wider effort to improve the availability of information about the places of suffering and preserve the memory of the victims through innovative and accessible digital formats.

For more information about the application and the project, visit the website www.virtualnasjecanja.detektor.ba.

The Virtual Memories project was implemented with the financial support of the European Union in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Irvin Pekmez studied journalism at the University of Sarajevo. During that time, he had his journalistic heroes and other role models from the culture of public debate and “wanted to be like them when I grew up”.

“I don’t know how far I got with that,” he jokes modestly, although he has, in fact, been awarded for his work.

He first heard about BIRN in his previous work for other media outlets.

“We relied on the work of the [BIRN] Sarajevo office for specific topics, especially those related to war crimes and trials. Of course, I later learned that BIRN is much more than that,” he explains.

His main focus now at BIRN, in addition to social problems, is foreign influence in Bosnia and Herzegovina. “The relentless abuse of the BiH system and all the systemic loopholes, along with unfulfilled agendas from the 1990s, require tireless observation and reporting to the public about the fact that the fight for this society is not over.” Irvin says.

There are several obstacles to investigative journalists’ work in Bosnia and Herzegovina, he notes.

“One of the biggest burdens is the lack of interest among young journalists to engage in this type of journalism. Pressure on a bad system requires, among other things, people who will apply that pressure. If there were more of us, it would be easier,” he says.

Of all his investigations, he is most proud of some. One is “Black-Clad ‘Humanitarians’ Promote Pro-Russian Agenda in Bosnia”, which was his first significant story published in BIRN.

“The Hostomel Filmmaker: Hunt for war criminals with the help of surveillance cameras” was one of many stories he got from a Kyiv visit in 2023. “A profound and deep human experience that I will never forget and that impacted me for life,” Irvin recalls.

Speaking of Ukraine, Pekmez worked on another investigation, which he came across totally unintentionally.

“From Bosnia to Ukraine: How a Serb Sportsman Became a Russian Fighter” is an example of “how a significant and influential story can be born from a random scroll through clips from Ukraine”, he adds.

“I don’t think there will be a repeat of the story about which I did two investigations with my colleagues,” he recalls, of “Disruptors: Inside Russia’s Balkan Training Camps for Moldovan ‘Destabilisation’”, and “Military Drones, Incendiary Devices: How Russian Trainers Taught Subversion at Balkan Camps” and other significant analyses and news, which eventually received a journalistic award.

“Because the authorities in Republika Srpska, despite all Detektor‘s evidence, continue to deny everything – there is a strange satisfaction in that,” Pekmez stresses.

Recently, with Detektor colleagues Enes Hodzic and Nino Bilajac, and the media outlet CU SENS, he won second place at the Superscrieri journalism awards in Romania in the TV and Video Journalism category.

Together with the organisation FactCheck from Bulgaria, they showed how people from Moldova were being trained in Russia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina to use weapons and drones carrying explosive devices for use in potential mass unrest in Moldova. This is a story that had been going on for two years. Irvin is glad they did not give up.

“It took a lot of time, building a network of trust with important people and a network of cooperation with journalists from Serbia and Moldova,” he recalls.

“The security aspect of this story is what, among other problems, moves the journalistic interest the most: the possibility that someone close to you is being trained for violent illegal tasks, and that the police who are in charge of your security belong to a system that denies all of this.

“The essence of danger and proof of how a state can, in peacetime, support a foreign paramilitary factor without having to explain itself,” Irvin explains.

Outside BIRN, Irvin likes to run in his spare time.

For young people who want to work as investigative journalists in the region, he has an encouraging message – it’s more fun than you think.

“Do you want to use your skills and curiosity to fight the system that is rigged against you? Then join us, we are fun and have snacks,” he concludes.

On June 4, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network of Bosnia and Herzegovina, BIRN BiH, and the Faculty of Criminalistics, Criminology and Security Studies, FKKSS, at the University of Sarajevo signed an agreement on scientific, educational, and professional cooperation, marking a step forward for joint research and education.

The agreement will establish a partnership between FKKSS and BIRN BiH in professional, educational, and scientific research fields. Among other activities aimed at strengthening cooperation in education and research, the agreement foresees jointly organising scientific research activities, conferences, symposia, seminars, workshops, as well as summer and winter schools.

The Dean of FKKSS, Jasmin Ahic, said the agreement is very important for the development not only of academic programmes but also of the faculty’s professional and specialized programmes. A particularly important aspect, according to him, relates to cooperation, especially with research centres dealing with specific areas in which the faculty has direct engagement.

“The segment related to the activities of law enforcement agencies, whether those focused on preventing or suppressing crime or addressing new and emerging phenomena within security challenges, and especially research centres, such as BIRN BiH/Detektor, allows us to say that the studies we conduct and the skills we provide to our future police, intelligence, and military professionals would not be complete without this component,” Ahic said.

Denis Dzidic, Director of BIRN BiH/Detektor, said the agreement represents an important step in strengthening cooperation between institutions and non-governmental organisations, and that joint efforts can contribute to the development and education of students.

“Through joint activities, we can provide opportunities for students and researchers and contribute to their development and education. Students will gain access to practical experience and the work of Detektor, and I expect that this cooperation will contribute to advancing the fields that the faculty focuses on, as well as investigative journalism in our country,” added Dzidic.

The agreement also includes joint projects in the areas of transitional justice, rule of law, extremism and the protection of human rights.

The award from the “Friends for Friends” Foundation was presented on May 27 to CU SENS journalist Malvina Cojocari, who, in cooperation with Detektor and the organisation FactCheck from Bulgaria, showed how people from Moldova were trained in Russia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina to use weapons and drones carrying explosive devices for use in mass unrest in Moldova.

“This award represents recognition for the work, responsibility, and passion I invest in journalism. It confirms that the stories I choose to tell reach people and have significance in society. At the same time, this recognition motivates me to continue practicing journalism with the same sincerity and dedication,” Cojocari told Detektor.

The programme “Investigation: Trained to Cause Chaos. Part II” ranks among the best media content published in Moldova during 2025. In addition to the “TV and Video Journalism” category, it was also nominated for the “Investigative Journalism” category.

The collaboration with the Moldovan media organisation CU SENS and Cojocari in 2025 resulted in the publication of two joint investigations, accompanied by TV programmes in summer that year.

One was published on Detektor.ba while another was simultaneously published on the CU SENS website.

The joint investigation revealed that at least eight Moldovan citizens between July and September 2024, were trained in Russian camps in Bosnia on how to use weapons and drones with explosive devices.

The plan was to provoke unrest in Moldova as part of mass disturbances organised by unidentified structures under Kremlin control.

Among the recruiters were people involved in vandalizing certain buildings in Paris in 2023. Some of the instructors and coordinators are linked to the Russian paramilitary group Wagner.

First place was awarded to colleagues from Ziarul de Gardă for the investigative series “The Kremlin’s Digital Army” and to the organisation Recorder for the investigation “The Largest Ghost Company, Confirmed by ANAF.”

Third place in the same category also went to Recorder for the piece “Alone. The Endless Nightmare of Abandoned Children.”

Out of a total of 300 submissions, a jury composed of 22 media experts selected 53 works published during 2025, which were nominated across nine competition categories: Journalism Debut, Local Media, TV and Video Journalism, Investigative Journalism, Feature Writing, Thematic Journalism, Innovation, Interview, and Civic Influencers.

The “Friends for Friends” Foundation is a Romanian nonprofit organisation focused on media work, social impact, education and creativity, which organised the awards in the investigative and TV journalism categories.

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.

Bilajac and Madlenak were nominated for a series of pieces about Slovak policemen and the head of the country’s counterintelligence service who have taken refuge from  legal proceedings in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Madlenak, a journalist with the Investigative Center Jan Kuciak, ICJK, was also nominated for another investigative piece in the same category.

In a joint investigation by BIRN Bosnia and ICJK that was published last year, Bilajac and Madlenak discovered that two officials involved in an internal struggle within the Slovak police are now living in exile in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They also established why the men have not been extradited back to Slovakia.

In an investigative piece published in February, Bilajac and Madlenak, along jointly with BIRN Bosnia journalist Enes Hodzic, found out that former Slovak counterintelligence head Peter Gasparovic, who was convicted of corruption and served two-thirds of his sentence, requested asylum in Bosnia and Herzegovina while on conditional release, which protected him from potential extradition.

Bilajac said the two investigative pieces involved a lot of effort, energy, time and stress.

“During our work, we were turned down by domestic institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as if nobody was particularly interested in how high-ranking security officials from Slovakia had escaped from justice and were hiding in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Or it was just their defence mechanism due to an omission allowing three corruption convicts to come and stay in our country in a very short period of time,” he said.

Bilajac explained that, with the help of their fellow journalists from Slovakia, they talked to lawyers, politicians, sociologists and prosecutors.

Madlenak said the nomination was particularly important because it was a joint project.

“Before being killed [in 2018], [Slovak journalist] Jan Kuciak was someone who was advocating for cooperation between journalists, especially investigative ones. To me, this nomination confirms that cooperation between journalists is working, we can genuinely be colleagues, not just competitors, even if we come from different media outlets,” he said.

He also said that such cooperation was important “considering events in our country and internationally with non-democratic regimes and movements being on the rise”.

“I think it is time to suppress our desire for exclusive news and our own ego and start working together. Investigative journalism is under unprecedented pressure and if we want to persevere, we must work together,” he said.