BIRN BiH

Balkan Investigative Reporting Network Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIRN BiH) has won the 2020 European Press Prize Special Award

BIRN BiH is a non-governmental organisation based in Sarajevo that specialises in monitoring and reporting on war crime trials and transitional justice processes, giving a voice to the victims. The organisation was founded in 2005 with the aim of providing people in Bosnia and Herzegovina with objective and timely information about the rule of law in the country and the wider region.

BIRN BiH is the first organisation, and to this day the only one, to provide continual coverage of war crime trials to the public in Bosnia and Herzegovina, thus creating a unique archive of more than 29,000 articles in the Bosnian and English language. BIRN BiH’s journalists have covered over 590 war crime cases in the country’s twenty domestic courts and at international courts as well.

Being present at war crime hearings allows BIRN BiH’s journalists to write unbiased reports, but also allows them to act as watchdogs, detecting and reporting on ongoing problems with the judiciary and advocating for their resolution. This is relevant for dealing with the past but also for investing in the future, helping society and public institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina with democratisation and rule of law processes.

Along with trial monitoring, BIRN BiH specialises in investigative jour- nalism and in-depth coverage of topics such as the rise of extremism and radicalisation, both religious and far-right, as well as malign foreign influence, corruption and processes of facing the past, plus lectures and training sessions for both domestic and international journalists and researchers.

Over the years, BIRN BiH’s reports on unprosecuted crimes have had a significant impact and victims who have trusted us to tell their stories for the first time have seen their cases picked up by prosecutors. In November 2019, the Bosnian state court sentenced a former Bosnian Serb fighter to twelve years in prison for raping a woman in Bratunac in 1992, after the victim in the case spoke publicly for the very first time about what she lived through on BIRN BiH’s monthly “TV Justice” programme, which is aired by the state broadcaster and seventeen local TV stations.

BIRN BiH is part of a regional network of non-governmental organisations promoting freedom of speech, human rights and democratic values in Southern and Eastern Europe gathered around an umbrella organisation – the Balkan Investigative Regional Reporting Network (BIRN Hub) – a structure that has the advantage of combining local, country-based expertise with unique regional cooperation.

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Projekt Spięcie

‘Projekt Spięcie’ was selecterd for the 2020 European Press Prize.

“Spięcie” is a new initiative that aims to tackle the issues of polarization and social media bubbles. Five magazines, with diverse political outlooks, came together to look for a way to engage in a public debate that would be honest and fruitful. The point of departure for us is the conviction that the fact that people have different worldviews can be a great start of a dialogue and not the end of it.

Every few weeks we pick a topic those five magazines with different political views each write about – and then we publish each other’s stories. In this way, readers are confronted with new ideas and points of view. Journalists participating in the project cannot preach to the choir and have to write in ways that are accessible for people who may not agree with them.

The project also works on a more symbolic level. Liberal or conservative, Catholic or anti-clerical, left-wing or right-wing, all these magazines acknowledge the right of people on the other side of the political spectrum to engage in a respectful and meaningful public debate.

Projekt Spięcie is supported by “Fundusz Obywatelski”

An overview of all people involved in Projekt Spięcie (authors, editors, and editors-in-chief) – in alphabetical order: