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On December 12, the ten fellows took part in a critique of their work during a final editorial evaluation session. They reflected on what they had learned over the year, and debated the strengths and weaknesses of their stories.

They also gave their suggestions for improving the format of the fellowship.

Earlier that day, the fellows attended a discussion about Croatia’s path following its admittance into the EU earlier this year.

The panel described how the country’s politics had lurched towards the right after its entry into the bloc. The speakers were Sandra Bencic, programme director of the Centre for Peace Studies; Vedran Horvat, director of the Croatian office of the Heinrich Boll Foundation; Davor Gjenero, a political analyst; and Irena Frlan, a journalist at Novi List.

The fellows also attended a discussion about the problems facing the Croatian media, which is struggling to survive in an overcrowded landscape. The speakers were Boris Postnikov, a senior adviser at the Ministry of Culture; Ivana Dragicevic, an editor at the foreign policy desk of Croatian National TV; Tena Perisin, a professor at Zagreb University’s journalism faculty; and Danela Zagar, from the NGO, GONG.

Later that afternoon, the fellows went on a sightseeing tour of Zagreb.

On December 13, the fellows spent the morning and early afternoon presenting their research to the independent selection committee.

The winners of this year’s fellowship were announced on Friday evening at a ceremony at the Croatian Journalists’ Association.

On the final night, an independent team of judges selected the three top stories from the year’s output.

The first prize in the 2013 fellowship, worth €4,000, was won by Vlad Odobescu, a Romanian reporter who described how his country’s politicians have bounced back from corruption investigations.

The second prize, worth €3,000, was won by Dino Jahic, a Bosnian reporter who investigated bribery in the education system. The third prize, worth €1,000, was won by Elena Stancu, a Romanian reporter who examined corruption in the job market for doctors.

The theme for this year’s competition was “integrity”. Journalists on the programme covered topics spanning the legacy of war, bad government and the politicisation of civil society.

The call for applications for next year’s fellowship will be announced in January.

Initiated by the Robert Bosch Stiftung and ERSTE Foundation in 2007, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, the annual fellowship provides financial and professional support to foster quality reporting in the Balkan region.

The programme also seeks to encourage regional networking among journalists and to provide balanced coverage of complex reform issues that are central to the region and the European Union.

This year’s ten fellows were selected from more than 120 applicants from nine Balkan countries.

The second prize was won by Dino Jahic, a Bosnian reporter who investigated bribery within the education system.

The third prize was won by Elena Stancu, a Romanian reporter who examined corruption in the job market for doctors.

The top prize is accompanied by an award of €4,000. The second prize is worth €3,000 and the third prize is worth €1,000.

The winning articles were selected by an independent panel of judges, comprised of Florian Hassel, Balkans correspondent for German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung; Remzi Lani, the executive director of the Albanian Media Institute; Gerald Knaus, founding chairman of the European Stability Initiative; Milorad Ivanovic, executive editor of the Serbian weekly, Novi Magazin; Markus Spielman, editor of the Swiss newspaper, Neue Zurcher Zeitung; and Adelheid Wölfl, an editor at the Austrian daily, Der Standard.

The jury members praised Odobescu’s report for its use of a strong storyline with a colourful central character to illustrate a region-wide problem.

Odobescu says the fellowship helped him “prioritise and structure information, especially when huge amounts of data are gathered”.

The winners were announced on the evening of Friday, 13 December, at a ceremony at the Croatian Journalists’ Association in Zagreb.

The theme for this year’s competition was “integrity”. Journalists on the programme spanning the legacy of war, bad government and the politicisation of civil society.

Initiated by the Robert Bosch Stiftung and ERSTE Foundation in 2007, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, the annual fellowship provides financial and professional support to foster quality reporting in the Balkan region.

The programme also seeks to encourage regional networking among journalists and to provide balanced coverage of complex reform issues that are central to the region and the European Union.

This year’s ten fellows were selected from more than 120 applicants from nine Balkan countries.

Next year’s programme will be open for applications from January 2014.

 

 

 

In a tough competition involving 222 entries, seven prizewinners were selected.

Stancu won the Special Prize for Coverage of Domestic Violence for an article published in Marie Claire Romania, about a young woman whose mother was a victim of domestic violence.  

Odobescu won third place in the Portrait Category with his article The Return of Marius, a feature report about the reintegration of a former prison convict.

Earlier this year, Stancu was awarded another journalistic grant. She is one of the recipients of the 2013-2014 Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism.

Through this she will receive intensive training from leading mental health and journalism experts and a stipend to report on a mental health topic of her choice.

http://www.cartercenter.org/news/pr/mhj-fellows-2013-2014.html   

She and the Romanian photographer Cosmin Bumbut will work on a multimedia project about the post-traumatic stress disorder in children exposed to family violence. For one year the team will examine the culture of education by violence in the Romanian families and society.

Ten journalists from across the region have spent the past few months investigating stories within the overall annual theme ‘Integrity’, tackling issues of corruption, media, politics and the legacy of war.

The Zagreb event represents the culmination of the journalists’ participation in the programme, when they will have the chance to present their work to the selection committee members who will vote for the top three stories.

The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on December 13, which will be attended by the Fellowship programme’s partners, selection committee members and Croatian media.

The winner will be awarded a cash prize of 4,000 euro, with the second and third place runners up receiving 3,000 euro and 1,000 euro respectively.

The final event in Zagreb will also feature meetings with important figures in Croatian media and politics, as well as a cultural programme.

This year’s Fellowship programme began in May in Vienna, where the fellows took part in career development training and fellowship orientation programmes. Each fellow was awarded a 2,000 euro bursary and a further 2,000 euro travel allowance.

As well as travelling to neighbouring Balkan states, thefellows also visited other EU member states including Greece, Czech Republic, Ireland, Britain, France, Germany and Belgium.

The fellowship programme aims to develop and support Balkan journalists reporting on complex reform issues. It was established by the Robert Bosch Stiftung and ERSTE Foundation in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.

“The prosecution of war crimes before national courts was part of negotiations with Croatia, and it is now with Montenegro, and it will be for Serbia as well,” Mirel, the director for the western Balkans in the European Commission Directorate General for Enlargement, told the BIRN conference in Belgrade on Thursday.

“But we should note that transitional justice is more than just war crimes trials and it goes beyond courtrooms. Here I would stress the issue of missing persons. How can reconciliation take place if thousands are missing?” he asked.

Mirel told the conference, which focused on transitional justice in the context of Belgrade’s EU ambitions, that Serbia still needed to do more to address the legacy of the 1990s wars.

“One of the problems is that trials in The Hague didn’t lead to a wider debate in the society. And some political leaders participated in the glorification of [Hague] indictees as heroes,” Mirel said.

Transitional justice will not be a specific part of the talks about the rule of law and human rights reforms that Serbia has to make to win membership from Brussels, but some elements like war crimes prosecution will be discussed in negotiations about chapters 23 and 24 in the EU body of legislation, which deal with the rule of law and human rights.

“A number of areas which deal with transitional justice will be touched upon directly through these chapters,” Serbian deputy justice minister Cedomir Backovic told the conference.

Serbian chief war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic pointed out the importance of working with other ex-Yugoslav states to bring suspects to justice.

“Without regional cooperation, our work in prosecuting war criminals would be impossible. But it is important to say that we don’t have the support of [Serbian] institutions and media, unlike our colleagues who prosecute organised crime,” Vukcevic said.

“I am referring to the problems we have with units for witness protection and the police who investigate war crimes,” he added.

The witness protection unit, part of the Serbian police, has been criticised for allegedly intimidating witnesses instead of shielding them.

Speaking about common problems that the region is facing when it comes to prosecuting war criminals, Ivan Jovanovic from the OSCE Mission to Serbia outlined three main problems.

“First is the time that passed from the conflict, second is access to public documents and third is witness protection,” Jovanovic said.

In the part of the conference dedicated to the role of civil society in the upcoming EU negotiations, Jelko Kacin, the European Parliament’s rapporteur for Serbia, stressed the importance of civil society being part of the negotiations.

“The European Union is asking Serbia to enroll civil society as part of the negotiations with the EU, especially when it comes to the chapters 23 and 24, which will be opened first and closed last,” Kacin said.

Jelena Djokic Jovic from Zagreb-based civil rights organisation Documenta he conference also heard how a Croatian campaign group called Platform 112 managed to convince the government to include some transitional justice issues in Croatia’s EU membership negotiations.

“Here I am mainly referring to a new network of courts – four specialised courts which are now prosecuting war crimes,” Jovic said.

The first panel will examine two topics, ‘EU efforts and the Institutional Framework for Achieving Transitional Justice in Serbia’ and ‘Achievements and Obstacles in Transitional Justice in the Region’.

The panel will consist of Pierre Mirel, director for the western Balkans at the European Commission Directorate for Western Balkans, Cedomir Backovic from the Serbian justice ministry, Vladimir Vukcevic, Serbia’s chief war crimes prosecutor, Ivan Jovanovic from OSCE Serbia, Marijana Toma from the Humanitarian Law Centre, Jelena Jovic from Documenta, Maja Micic from the Youth Initiative for Human Rights and Erna Mackic from BIRN Bosnia.

The second panel will also tackle two topics, ‘The Role of Civil Society in Serbia’s Negotiations with the EU in the Field of Transitional Justice’ and  ‘Monitoring of War Crime Trials’, and will include Ivana Cirkovic from the Serbian government’s Office for Cooperation with Civil Society alongside representatives of civil society and media.

The conference, entitled ‘Achievements and Position of Transitional Justice in Talks Between Serbia and the EU’, will be opened by BIRN’s regional director Gordana Igric.

The conference is part of BIRN’s Balkan Transitional Justice project, which aims to improve public understanding of transitional justice issues in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia.

The full agenda can be downloaded here.

The Dom Omladine cinema was packed for the screening  and warm applause greeted the end of the film documentary about young people and the legacy of war in the former Yugoslavia.

‘The Majority Starts Here’ follows six young people from the former Yugoslavia who make a journey through the region, examining how the conflicts of the past, which they were too young to understand fully at the time, have influenced both their present and their prospects for the future.

Along the way, they come face-to-face with some of the ghosts of the past in the shape of impoverished wartime refugees, military veterans and unrepentant nationalists.

They also see how nationalist ideas which led to war have been reflected in the region’s economy, culture and even architecture, as they muse on how genuine tolerance and reconciliation can develop in places which have endured such divisive violence.

The film was premiered in Skopje on September 26, and then screened in Belgrade, Zagreb, Pristina, Sarajevo, Novi Sad, Podgorica and Tuzla.

A three-episode version of the documentary has been shown on television stations across the region including Macedonian cable TV station 24 VESTI, Sarajevo-based Al Jazeera Balkans and Montenegrin TV channel Vijesti.

‘The Majority Starts Here’ was produced by BIRN and directed by award-winning film-maker Lode Desmet. In 2006, Desmet and BIRN also produced the film ‘Does Anyone Have a Plan?’, about the future status of Kosovo.

The documentary is part of BIRN’s Balkan Transitional Justice project, which aims to improve public understanding of transitional justice issues in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia.