Tag: Bosnia and Herzegovina

The school was organised by the Press Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the help of German foundations Konrad Adenauer, Heinrich Böll, DVV International, and the OSCE Mission in Bosnia. Participants were more then 30 journalism students from Mostar, Sarajevo, Tuzla and Banja Luka.

The school programme was based on a theoretical and practical approach towards professional principles of journalism, media law, and self regulation for print media as well as mechanisms for protection of journalists and journalism. Ahmetasevic spoke about recommendations for court reporters, pointing out the importance of paying respect to press codes and roles defined by it. The school will be organised in the next year in all of the cities where the students are coming from, and BIRN – Justice Report editor will be among the trainers.

Justice Report is the only daily bilingual publication dedicated to covering trials before the War Crimes Chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Justice Report also exclusively covers procedures in the local courts and the broader projects of transitional justice and coming to terms with the past at the national and regional level.

In 2008 BIRN BIH’s Justice Report publication was generously supported by:

the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Sarajevo, and the National Endowment for Democracy.
 
Justice Report is a weekly BIRN online publication.

Radio Justice started daily broadcasts on August 11, 2008. Twice a day, radio and some television stations around the country transmit our audio reports, produced by BIRN – Justice Report staff. Reports can also be downloaded from our web site, in the Radio Justice section.

This project will expand BIRN BiH’s presence in the broadcast media around Bosnia and Herzegovina. Previously BIRN BiH’s project consisted of brief written reports covering trials in the front of the War Crimes Chamber at the State court. Reports are transmitted daily to newspapers around the country.
 
In 2007, the National Endowment for Democracy supported BIRN’s Justice Report publication. The OSCE Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina gave support for the creation of the pilot programmes for the Radio Justice at the beginning of 2008.

Every day Radio Justice will transmit two audio reports, published by Justice Report – www.bim.ba, as part of its regular activities. The reports will be produced by our staff and sent as e-mail attachments to more than 80 different media in Bosnia and Herzegovina and abroad.

A new staff member has joined our team. Journalist Jasmina Djikoli will be responsible for the reports transmitted as part of the Radio Justice programme.

Reports can be downloaded from our website, in the Radio Justice section, http://www.bim.ba/?tpl=342.

The goal of Radio Justice is to make the work of BIRN – Justice Report and its war crime trials reports available to as many people as possible.

The OSCE Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina and National Endowment for Democracy, NED, provide financial support for BIRN BiH’s Radio Justice programme.

For additional information on Radio Justice programme please write to: [email protected]

The Report pertains to the work of the War Crimes Chamber of the State Court in Sarajevo. You can read a detailed review at http://www.bim.ba/en/1/80/13959/.

ICTJ is an organization that helps countries determine responsibility for mass crimes and human rights violations in the past. The Center offers information on comparative practices, legal and political analysis, documentation and strategic research to institutions in pursuit of justice and truth, non-governmental organizations, governments and others. The Center has been active on the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 2002. It focuses on capacity building in the field of transitional justice.

BIRN – Justice Report is an agency that specializes in reporting trials conducted before the War Crimes Chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as transitional justice issues and the general effort to confront the past in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

As a part of their study visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina, students from the San Domenico School in California, USA, paid a visit to the BIRN – Justice Report office in Sarajevo. They met editor Nidzara Ahmetasevic and journalists, Aida Alic and Merima Husejnovic.

During this visit, Justice Report journalists discussed war crimes investigations in Bosnia, the role of media, and the challenges facing Bosnian society after the war.

Professor Ian Sether, head of the Department for History at San Domenico School, informed us that students are regular readers of BIRN reports, and use them for their studies as well as for articles on human rights issues published in their student newspaper Aeqvitas.

BIRN – Justice Report is quoted several times in the report and praised for its work in covering war crimes trails in the country.

The report details numerous practical and political problems impeding these trials on a local level. The obstacles include the prosecutors’ offices lack sufficient staff and the lack of specialisation. Cooperation between prosecutors and police and between police across entity lines continues to be problematic.

Witness protection measures are rarely, if ever, employed, and witness support services are generally not available. Prosecutors often fail to make use of the available sources of evidence and do not take steps necessary to secure the suspects’ attendance at trial. Defence attorneys generally lack access to training in relevant areas of law and are often inadequately, or not at all, compensated for their work. Some cantonal and district courts have yet to try a single case. The report is available at: http://hrw.org/reports/2008/bosnia0708/

Nerma Jelacic previously worked as a reporter for the British-based newspapers, the Observer, the Guardian and The Financial Times. She has covered foreign affairs and is a well-known expert on Balkan affairs.

Born in Visegrad, Bosnia, she was forced to leave her country during the war in the former Yugoslavia.

As director of the Bosnia office of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting from 2003, she organised training for regional journalists in the field of transitional justice, and was involved in many other similar projects.

In 2005, she became director of the BIRN office in Sarajevo and editor of the Balkan Insight news service as well as the Justice report.

The handbook, written by BIRN journalists, is intended for all those who wish to learn about the work of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, BiH, the State prosecution service and the War Crimes Chamber. It also provides an overview of the key laws applied in processing war crimes cases, as well as information about the work of other institutions involved in transitional justice and the process of facing the past in BiH.
 
In addition, the handbook provides basic information on Justice Report – the news agency of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network – which specialises in reporting on the War Crimes Chamber of the Court of BiH and all other aspects of the transitional justice process in the country and the rest of the region. 
 
Since Justice Report was established in April 2006, it has produced nearly 1,000 courtroom stories. An increasing number of people have come to trust our information and support our efforts. They include local and international media, non-governmental organizations, foreign governments, as well as Bosnian citizens residing in the country and abroad. 
 
Our reports have been successful at an international level. Our achievements include nominations for prestigious awards, the republication of our texts – in full or in part – and the use of quotes from our journalists in the media all over the world, from Japan to the US. 
 
The fact that our stories reach the people who survived the war and witnessed its horror is of the utmost importance to Justice Report. Witnesses who want to tell their stories contact us. By reading our stories, they learn about other people who survived similar horrors, and they establish mutual contacts. Justice Report makes every effort to provide them with as much useful information as possible, and to recover their faith both in the practical work of the judiciary and in the broader concept of justice. 
 
Knowing that those who possess correct and timely information have power to change things for the better, we continue with our work, determined to make that power of knowledge available to as many Bosnian citizens as possible. 
 
The handbook is available in the English and Bosnian languages on our website http://www.bim.ba  

The agreement extends Norway’s support for BIRN’s highly-praised project for the next 18 months.

Justice Report has become a leading source of information in the local and English languages on war crimes trials before domestic courts and on the region’s struggle to deal with its past.

To subscribe to Justice Report or find out more about this project, please visit www.bim.ba or write to BIRN BiH director, Nerma Jelacic at [email protected].