Source: balkaninsight The crisis of democratic governance in the Balkans is obvious. But the overt turn towards authoritarianism in countries like Macedonia and Serbia is being accelerated by the still more significant crisis of democratic norms and constitutional government in the West. These two dynamics are intrinsically linked – as is any hope of resolving them. Take the recent assault […]

Call for Participants and Abstracts The Faculty of Political Science of the University of Sarajevo and forumZFD are organizing a two-day academic conference titled “The Politics of Building Peace in the Region: Burdens of the Past and Visions for the Future”. The conference will be held at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Sarajevo from 19-22 October 2017. Keynote speakers […]

A weeklong course examining the history, context, and changing politics of peacebuilding It is now more than twenty years since the war in Bosnia but the economy is still struggling, the infrastructure is still crumbling, and the political institutions are still stalled in conflict. For the international community, Bosnia is the textbook case for post-conflict peacebuilding, but what has actually […]

Source: http://www.balkaninsight.com   Anti-smoking warning “Smoking kills” on a packet of cigarettes in Bosnia, written completely the same in all languages, with the only difference is that the Serbian warning is written in the Cyrillic script. Photo: Facebook/Sava Mandic    A declaration that Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian are all variations of the same language has annoyed conservatives, but received […]

Source:balkaninsight Photo: Srebrenica town centre, Samun Benutzer/Wikicommons   Mladen Grujicic, Srebrenica’s first Serb mayor, says he wants to look beyond the trauma of war and the bitterly-contested genocide debate to seek a better future for the depopulated, impoverished town. “When people see things going forwards, they will stop going back to the past. The past has only created conflict and […]

Source: http://www.balkaninsight.com Sven Milekić, BIRN, Zagreb Croatia’s tourist guide association told BIRN that it is working alongside the country’s tourism ministry to change the regulations on qualifying examinations for guides to include specialised tuition on the 1990s war. “We see tourist guides as a link between tourism and cultural heritage; without a well-educated guide, there can be no cultural tourism. And […]

Source: recom.link By Denisa Kostovicova* ABSTRACT Contemporary conflicts are seldom contained within nation states. The cross-border nature of violence has prompted scholars to call for a regional approach to transitional justice (TJ). This article furthers our understanding of the regional dimension of postconflict justice by addressing the puzzle of whether discourse in regional-level debates is different from that in national- […]

THE RECONCILIATION PROCESS BEGAN TOO EARLY IN KOSOVO, NOW IT IS DERIDED AS A JOKE. This is how this article should start. With this statement. With a rather generalized, vague and cloudy premise, just like the very concept of reconciliation – of reconciliation between nations which inflicted on each other violence, killings, destruction, deportation, and unforgettable suffering and horrors (oh, […]

Source: BIRN Photo: BIRN The bridge across the river dividing the Kosovo town of Mitrovica into ethnic Albanian and Serb areas is being reopened, but its history as a focus for tensions means locals are wary about expecting progress. Since the war ended in Kosovo in 1999, the bridge over the river Ibar in the town of Mitrovica has become […]

Source: http://www.balkaninsight.com   President Hashim Thaci announced a new Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which he said was intended to encourage mutual forgiveness among Kosovo’s Albanians and Serbs.   Die Morina, Doruntina Baliu, BIRN, Pristina                                                       […]