Bosnia and Herzegovina Archives - Page 20 of 33

BIRN BiH at London Summit

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Bosnia and Herzegovina – BIRN BiH – contributed to one of the largest campaigns ever launched against sexual violence in conflict, the Global Summit on Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict that took place in London 10-13 June.

Participation at the Summit’s Fringe, where NGOs held panel discussions, film screenings, concerts, exhibitions, etc. allowed BIRN BiH to present its work and experience covering wartime sexual violence in BiH with the world.

“We were able to get international exposure and take equal part alongside some of the biggest and most relevant organizations dedicated to the cause such as Save the Children, Amnesty International, United Nations,” said Development and Communications Officer at BIRN BiH Zlatan Music.

In addition, the Summit presented a great opportunity to get more insight into the key stakeholders and their opinions on the subject.

“We managed to collect valuable feedback and contacts from the participants who attended our events, and with whom we want to build relationships for cooperation in the future. These include Northwestern University, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and International Federation of Medical Students’ Association,” Music added.

The Summit provided a platform for discussion about the various struggles faced by victims of sexual violence face which can often ultimately render them social outcasts. In this sense it was important to see and to hear political leaders publicly commit to the cause.

The exchange of knowledge and participation at the Summit’s Fringe was surely one of the key organizational achievements of 2014.

BIRN BiH Hosts Events at Sexual Violence Summit

BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina will host several events in the Fringe Exhibition Area at Excel London during the Global Summit on Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict from June 10-12.

The first event will be a media panel entitled ‘The Challenges to Objective Reporting about Wartime Sexual Violence: A Focus on Bosnia’ that will bring together the journalists involved in founding BIRN BiH in 2005 and creating a platform for reporting about war crime trials, victims’ stories and other developments in the justice field.

The media panel will take place on June 10 at 11.30am in discussion room 6, and will be hosted by Nerma Jelacic, ICTY head of communications, Ed Vulliamy (TBC), a writer for The Guardian and The Observer, and Erna Mackic, editor-in-chief of BIRN’s Justice Report.

At the second event entitled: ‘Testimonies of Sexual Violence in BiH: A Short film Followed by a Q&A’, BIRN BiH will present a collection of testimonies recorded for an upcoming film about wartime sexual violence. The film uncovers wartime sex crimes and reflects upon the main issues preventing victims of sexual abuse from coming forward to testify.

The event will take place on June 12 at 4.30pm in discussion room 6, and will be hosted by Andi Gitow, executive producer in the UN’s news and media division, Erna Mackic, editor-in-chief of BIRN’s Justice Report, and Denis Dzidic, a journalist for BIRN’s Balkan Transitional Justice programme.

On the same day at 12.25pm in the Silent Cinema space on Screen 1, BIRN BiH will present ‘Sexual Violence as a War Crime’, a one-and-a-half-hour video compilation of various news reports and testimonies recorded for its ‘TV Justice’ programme.

The entire schedule for the Fringe Exhibition Area at Excel London is available here: http://esvcsummit.com/publicprogramme/Agenda/Index?day=1

You can stay in touch during the event by following the Twitter hashtags: #EndSVCHack, #TimeToAct

BIRN BiH Supports Wartime Sexual Violence Victims

BIRN BiH, along with several other non-governmental organization from across Bosnia and Herzegovina, has joined a network dedicated to helping victims of wartime sexual violence to testify before the courts.

Experts in the field of law and psychology from all over the country, in cooperation with the country’s witness support units, will provide free psychological and legal aid before, during, and after trials.

The network will be able to mobilise teams to meet the victim at home address or at whatever location suits them best.
“Testifying about wartime rape is difficult and hard, testifying about your own personal experience is even harder. With our efforts will be able to help and prepare witnesses who are willing to testify,” the Foundation of Local Democracy, which initiated the network, said in a statement.

The network is called Improving the Position of Women Victims of War in Bosnia and Herzegovina and is funded by Netherlands’ MATRA fund.

For more information about the network, contact +387 33 570 560 or any of its members.

BIRN BiH in Publication on Global Missing Persons Initiative

A publication of the International Commission on Missing Persons, ICMP, has quoted the director of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Anisa Suceska Vekic, on global challenges in the search for missing persons.

The publication, entitled “The Missing – An Agenda for the Future”, quotes Suceska-Vekic in several places as a participant in an expert debate held in 2013 in Sarajevo, which discussed lessons learned in Bosnia and Herzegovina that can be applied across the world.

“More than 70% of missing persons have been accounted for thanks to the cooperation of the international community, domestic authorities, the prosecutor’s offices and civil society in a scenario that is unique, and the process took place within a legal framework to support families of the missing,” it quoted Suceska-Vekic as having said.

“In the last decade in the UK and USA millions of children disappear annually, and in Brazil some 40,000 children disappear annually due to drug use and trafficking. In India, 35,000 children have been found dead,” she added.

“They too were victims of human trafficking. We do not have the right not to help them because the problem is essentially the same. The role of government is the same, […] and there is the same need of the families to find their relatives, and the same need for international standards.”

The ICMP hosted a global conference last year to discuss a set of issues that will help define an agenda for the future of the missing persons issue, based on the experience of the missing persons process in the Western Balkans.

You can download the publication on this link: http://www.ic-mp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/icmp-conference-report.pdf

BIRN BiH Film Uncovers Unknown Wartime Sex Crimes

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Bosnia and Herzegovina, BIRN BiH, has initiated a three-year strategy focusing on Wartime Sexual Violence. The strategy was presented at an expert debate entitled: Crimes of War – Sexual Violence in Sarajevo.

During the past five months, BIRN BiH’s team of journalists has undertaken a drive to collect new and unheard testimonies of people who were subjected to horrific physical and psychological torture during the Bosnian war of 1992-5.

The March issue of BIRN BiH’s TV Justice magazine included a testimony of one woman raped by several soldiers every day over the course of a year while she was detained in her own house. The testimony, exclusively provided to BIRN BiH, has never been given before a judge.

“I was stunned and caught up in front of the TV screen. Fascinating, shocking, and moving at the same time. I could almost hear her cry for help. Well done!” the editor-in-chief of Radio Free Europe, Milenko Vockic, said.

In cooperation with victims associations and centers for social and mental health, BIRN BiH has continued to reach out to other “silent” victims.

“We hope that the stories we record for the web and our upcoming documentary film will encourage new indictments, as many of the perpetrators remain at large,” Anisa Suceska Vekic, BIRN BiH’s director and programme manager, said.

The film, expected in August 2014, will be entirely dedicated to the stigmatizing issue of sexually abused women and men during the war, both those living in and outside the country.

Through analysis, it will address some of the main issues preventing victims of sexual abuse from coming forward and testifying. It will also reflect on the available prosecution mechanisms and victim support programs, and reconstruct the process of testifying before the court.

“At the time, I was a victim of war, now I am a victim of the government that refuses to try rapists,” a protected witness says in an interview. “It is important to speak and to testify about what happened, not just because of me and what I have been through, but for the women that were killed,” she adds.

Fewer than 60 such cases have been brought to court since 2005, which is what originally inspired BIRN BiH to give more emphasis to this important issue.

BIRN BiH Presents Justice Series Programme

BIRN BiH presented its umbrella programme ‘Justice Series: Media, Civil Society and War Crime Trials’ to over 500 delegates from all over Europe at the 25th Annual European Foundation Centre (EFC) Assembly that took place in Sarajevo from May 15 to 17.

“Being in Bosnia and Herzegovina offered a unique opportunity to take a critical look at achievements and future challenges in a region of Europe that features the highest grade of activities by foreign donors,” said a press statement from the EFC.

BIRN BiH took part in a session on the transitional justice, reconciliation and conflict resolution entitled ‘Dealing With the Past for the Sake of the Future’ which involved video screenings and presentations.

BIRN BiH’s Justice Series was also featured in Mirovne novine, a publication issued by the co-organiser of the event, the Network for Peacebuilding in BiH.

Other local organisations that took part in the event were Caritas BK BiH, Catholic Relief Services, Helsinki Committee Bijeljina, the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, Nensen Dialogue Center Sarajevo, Vive žene, Network Against Torture, United Nations Development Programme, TJAR and TRIAL.

BIRN BiH to Hold Two Events at the Global Summit

BIRN BiH representatives will participate at the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict set to take place 10-13 June 2014 at ExCel London.

In addition, BIRN BiH will hold two events at the Summit’s Fringe. A debate that will gather worldwide media professionals as well as the BIRN’s experts in war crime trials monitoring to discuss the importance of reporting about sexual war crimes processing, and screening of selected video testimonies of victims of sexual violence from the Bosnian war followed by a Questions and Answers session.

The event will be hosted by the UK’s Foreign Secretary William Hauge and Angelina Jolie, Special Envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. It will be the largest gathering ever brought together on this subject, with a view to creating irreversible momentum against sexual violence in conflict and practical action that impacts those on the ground.

More information about the Summit is available at the End Sexual Violence in Conflict Facebook page, and the Official Website, People can also receive updates about the Summit via twitter @end_svc or through #TimeToAct and #SexualViolence hashtags.

BIRN BiH Work to Feature in London Art Show

The Balkan Institute for Conflict Resolution, Responsibility and Reconciliation of the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology earlier this year asked BIRN BiH to collect data for an upcoming London exhibition by one of Bosnia’s leading artists, Sejla Kameric.

The exhibition set to premier in October at London’s Welcome Collection will be dedicated to Forensic Medicine.

Through the use of various original evidence, archival material, photographic documentation, film footage and audio interviews, it will showcase the journey from crime scene to courtroom.

To realise the project, Kameric will use some of the most interesting testimonies and stories that BIRN BiH recorded for its TV Justice show and published via its signature news agency for war crimes trial monitoring, Justice Report.

Kameric’s artwork will take the form of a haunting multimedia installation and an online project hosted on Welcome Collection’s website.

Welcome Collection has been recognized as one of the fastest growing and most influential cultural spaces in London. With over 500,000 visitors a year it is one of the most innovative public venues in the UK.

BIRN Journalist Takes Part in Huffpost Live Cast on Bosnia Protests

Balkan Insight journalist Elvira Mujkic Jukic was one of five guests on a Huffpost Live cast about the Bosnian protests that was aired on March 5.

Mujkic Jukic spoke about what was needed Bosnia, emphasising the necessity of reforms that can be implemented in the immediate future.

“These reforms are in the economy, in making the environment easier for investments or starting a company and creating new jobs that could probably satisfy some of the demands of the protesters. If we put the focus on reforms of the constitution, that could take years, while there are many other things that can be done now,” she said.

Other speakers included Muhamed Sacirbey, former foreign minister and ambassador to the UN for Bosnia and Herzegovina , Aldin Arnautovic, activist and freelance journalist, Haris Alisic, new media analyst at Al Jazeera Media Network and Nadja Skaljic, senior fellow for Europe at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

View the entire Huffpost Live cast:

Dzana Brkanic

Dzana joined the BIRN team in May 2013. She has been working as a journalist since 2005 after beginning her career as a reporter for Radio Free Europe. Since December 2019, she has been Deputy Editor in BIRN BiH.

She has worked as an editor and journalist for several media outlets in Bosnias, including the daily newspaper Dnevni Avaz, TV Sarajevo and Alfa TV, researching and reporting on politics, the economy, crime, culture and other issues.

Before joining BIRN, Brkanic worked as communications officer for the Media Intelligence Agency (MIA), becoming a PR specialist with in-depth knowledge of the media scene in Bosnia and the region. She graduated in journalism at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Sarajevo.

Brkanic is the author of two documentaries: Underground, about a war hospital built four meters below ground in Olovo during the war, where more than 500 babies were born and hundreds of lives saved; and Four Walls, about the reduction of rights of LGBTIQ persons in BiH and the region, as well as attacks by right-wing and extremist organizations against members of that community.

She contributed to a film, Journalism Is not a Crime, as a director, and also acted as a researcher on two films about missing persons and victims of wartime sexual violence produced by BIRN BiH.

In recent years, she has worked as a trainer for young journalists and students at numerous workshops on reporting on victims, missing persons, reporting from court and investigative journalism. She has participated in many conferences as a panelist.

She won the European Union Investigative Journalism Awards for her investigation into non-transparent collection of humanitarian funds for the construction of wells and mosques in Africa in 2021, and, as a co-author, for a research of hate crimes in 2023. As member of BIRN BiH newsroom, she won the Special Award of the European Press Prize in 2020 for “efforts and success in securing justice for war crime victims”.