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Sandu won the award of 4,000 euros for her investigation into the trafficking of Roma children to Western Europe.

Kosovo journalist Shkumbin Ahmetxhekaj grabbed second prize, winning 3,000 euros for his investigation into the impact of medical brain drain in Europe’s youngest country.

Greek journalist Kostas Zafeiropoulos came third, collecting 1,000 euros for his work on cyber propaganda.

Jury members praised Sandu, a news anchor and editor at Romanian public radio and a reporter at large for quarterly magazine DoR, for her meticulous reporting on what Europol has described as one of Europe’s biggest trafficking rings.

Her investigation, Blind Justice for Romania’s Trafficked Roma Children, reveals the scale and complexity of an alleged criminal enterprise in the Romanian town of Tandarei, where investigators say local gangsters have trafficked scores of children into a life of forced criminality.

“At a time when we only get information in fragments and attention spans are limited to 140 characters, Ani produced a piece brimming with detail, suspense and thoughtful, elaborate research that grabs you to the end and you won’t easily forget,” said Elena Panagiotidis, editor of Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

“Keeping people like slaves in Europe seems unthinkable, although we’re aware of Roma begging and being abused. Ani sheds light on this topic in a way that doesn’t sensationalise it. She contacted — or tried to contact — all the people involved. She found superb characters in Britain telling her how they discovered the network.

“She gives us a picture of life in Tandarei. She read countless court documents. It’s like she said: ‘a detective story without a happy ending.’”

Ahmetxhekaj, an editor at Kosovo Public Television, won praise for Brain Drain: Will the Last Doctor in Kosovo Turn Out the Lights.

“The exodus of medical personnel from the Balkans to Germany and other EU countries is well known by now,” said Florian Hassel, Central and Eastern Europe correspondent for German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.

“Shkumbin Ahmetxhekaj managed to break new ground nevertheless, reporting on the dark side of the medical exodus and the newly born exodus industry in his home country, Kosovo, and on Germany, where hospitals hire nurses and doctors from Kosovo by the hundreds but often find the reality different from their expectations.”

The jury singled out Zafeiropoulos, an investigative reporter for Greek daily Efimerida ton Sintakton, for his soon-to-be published “Alexander the Bot: The Twitter War for the Macedonian Soul”.

“It’s a good feature examining and exploring cyber nationalism using the latest methods of ‘computational propaganda’,” said Remzi Lani, executive director of the Albanian Media Institute.

Ten journalists from across the Balkans spent more than six months pursuing in-depth stories and investigations linked to this year’s theme: “freedom”. They came from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia.

The jury congratulated all of this year’s fellows on the originality and integrity of their work, which included stories on demographic change, public health, energy independence, human rights, refugees and historical revisionism.

In addition to Sandu, Ahmetxhekaj and Zafeiropoulos, this year’s fellows were Dina Djordjevic (Serbia), Stavros Malichudis (Greece), Milena Mitrovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Angel Petrov (Bulgaria), Jelena Prtoric (Croatia), Vedrana Simicevic (Croatia) and Katerina Topalova (North Macedonia). This year’s programme editors were Timothy Large and Neil Arun.

A collection of their stories will be published in the new year.

The jury members were Elena Panagiotidis, editor of Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung; Florian Hassel, Central and Eastern Europe correspondent for German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung; Remzi Lani, executive director of the Albanian Media Institute; Kristof Bender, deputy chairman of the European Stability Initiative; Milorad Ivanovic, representative of the BFJE alumni network; and Adelheid Wolfl, correspondent for Austrian daily Der Standard.

With the conclusion of this year’s programme, the 10 fellows join the BFJE alumni network, which consists of more than 100 journalists from 10 Balkan countries who collaborate on stories and promote the highest professional standards.

The Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence was launched in 2007 to promote high-quality, cross-border reporting. The programme provides fellows with financial and editorial support, allowing them to travel, report and write their stories and develop their journalistic skills.

In 2020, the fellowship programme will expand to include journalists from the Visegrad Four countries of Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

The Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence is implemented by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network and supported by ERSTE Foundation.

BIRN organised a study visit to The Hague from December 1 to 5, enabling ten journalists from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia to visit institutions involved in transitional justice processes that address crimes committed during the Balkan wars.

The journalists from various media outlets visited the Kosovo Specialist Chambers and the Special Prosecutor’s Office, where they met representatives of both institutions, as well as representatives of the Registry and Ombudsperson.

They also visited the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, where they met officials from its Registry and the Office of the Prosecutor.

They then had extensive training on how to use the Mechanism’s database, which provides online access to the public judicial records of all completed cases before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the Mechanism.

The journalists also visited the Association of Defence Counsel practising before the International Courts and Tribunals.

On the last day of their visit, the journalists visited the International Commission on Missing Persons, where they were told more about the ICMP’s work in the Balkans and globally, and visited its laboratory.

All ten journalists who participated in the study visit received grants from BIRN to write in-depth stories on transitional justice issues in the Balkans.

Their stories will cover variety of topics, including criminal justice, reparations and missing persons. All the stories will be developed under the mentorship of BIRN editors and will be published in 2020.

Both the study visit and the granting scheme are part of BIRN’s Transitional Justice Programme, a regional initiative that aims to improve the general public’s understanding of transitional justice in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. The programme is supported by the European Commission.

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network has selected 20 journalists, historians, artists and activists to receive grants to create small projects based on the archives of the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague and domestic courts in former Yugoslav countries.

The recipients of the grants will conduct research, collect documents and dig deeper into the courts’ archives.

They will produce a total of 18 small projects that use the archives to explore topics related to truth, justice, accountability and dealing with the past.

“The immense archive of the ICTY and other international and local courts in the former Yugoslavia is an opportunity for all of us – journalists, artists, historians and civil society in general – to look beyond court records in order to try to reveal, expose and document wrongdoings and explain the complexity of the 1990s wars,” said Marija Ristic, regional director of BIRN.

“This is a unique initiative that brings together different professions with the same goal – to increase discussion around our past, but also to acknowledge the suffering of the others at the time where revisionism and denial is growing,” she added.

BIRN initially planned to fund only 10 small projects, but due to the large number of high-quality applications, decided to increase that number and fund 20 grantees to explore the courts’ archives.

“The huge interest we had for this shows that despite negative trends, many of us still very much care about continue to work on dealing with the past,” Ristic said.

The projects will include websites, journalistic pieces, audio projects, photographs, drawings and educational guidelines.

They will explore issues such as sexual violence, amnesty laws, economic crimes, as well as the role of music, media, elites and paramilitaries during the violent break-up of Yugoslavia, and will be mentored by BIRN staff during the process.

Some of the projects will shed light on specific incidents that happened during the Balkan wars but were never exposed to the wider public.

The grant scheme is supported by the Kingdom of The Netherlands and is a part of BIRN’s Transitional Justice Programme, a regional initiative that aims to improve the general public’s understanding of transitional justice in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia.

The selected grantees will be working on the following projects:

Barbara Matejcic will produce an audio documentary based on the ICTY’s sexual violence cases.

Biljana Volchevska will produce an academic paper based on archival research of documentation related to amnesty laws at the International Criminal Court and the national court of North Macedonia.

Braden Bjella will research the role of music in the Yugoslav wars.

Edin Omercic will dig deeper into the military uprising that started in September 1993 in Banja Luka.

Ejup Gojnovci will write a journalistic piece about the murder of 16 men from the Mirena family during the war in Kosovo.

Elma Demir will explore the political economy of war by looking into economic crimes in the archives of the ICTY.

Emir Suljagic will question the role of the Bosnian Serb Assembly before and during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Iva Vukusic will write an academic paper and create an educational website to present crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina by paramilitary forces.

Ivana Radovic will examine cases of sexual slavery in the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the context of human trafficking.

Jorie Horsthuis and Martino Lombezzi will look into the daily work of domestic courts to show how facts are assessed and justice and accountability are established.

Nikolaos Kostopoulos will create an artistic multimedia project examining the role of media narratives during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.

Paul Lowe will create a visual presentation of ‘Sniper Alley’ during the siege of Sarajevo using archive footage and other available materials.

Stacy Sullivan will follow up a story she covered years ago about a mother and her son who is born of rape and their search for truth and justice in the aftermath of war.

Tom Barlow Brown will mix a visual and investigative approach to present more information about the shelling of the town of Gorazde during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Tvrtko Pater will use the ICTY archives to develop educational content that will be used in high schools and will allow both students and professors to tackle the topic of war crime trials.

Velma Saric and Mirko Pincelli will create a documentary explaining the crimes that were committed in Vlasenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, why this case is important and how it affected the ICTY’s work.

Vladimir Miladinovic will create a series of 34 drawings based on one of the found documents in the archive of the ICTY.

Vladimir Petrovic will create a digital collection of material related to the Vance-Owen Peace Plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The fund is intended to increase cooperation between journalists in the region and their knowledge and skills through joint cooperation on cross-border investigative stories.

The stories should be original, evidence-based and rich in context, showing new or broader insights into the region.

Regional teams with professional freelance or staff journalists are eligible to apply for the fund. Journalists can also apply individually, and BIRN will help them by connecting them with reporters in other countries to form a cross-border team. Teams and stories must be based in at least two of the following countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia.

Please read our editorial guidelines before applying.

In case your story also includes countries in Eastern Europe, check our Reporting Democracy grant scheme.

Applicants should complete and submit only one application with one proposal. The application must be completed in English.

Proposals should be developed independently by applicants. It is your responsibility to ensure you can devote enough time to researching and reporting the story and publishing the final article through BIRN, and, where necessary, gaining prior consent from your employer.

If you are employed by other media, we can work with you and your outlet for a joint-bylined article.

Candidates are obliged to provide at least one example of their writing along with the application form. Sample articles may be in English or local languages.

BIRN will provide logistical, financial and editorial support for the stories. Fees may vary depending on the complexity of the story, while the maximum amount per journalists in the team is 1,200 euros.