Democracy

The Dayton Agreement is centred around a warped, ethnicised view that accords a special role in the state to the three constitutional peoples – the Bosniaks, the Croats and the Serbs. The overall population, the citizens, the citoyens were effectively stripped of their powers; the individual person degraded – existing merely as an instrument of ethnic power cartels. Click here for download

Tirana's historic building stock is disappearing. Overnight, listed buildings lose their status and are demolished the next day. Last year, at least ten villas were levelled to the ground. In their place, multi-story residential and commercial buildings are being built by private investors. This development does not benefit the city's residents.

Appealing to their responsibilities and ethics, the media has a huge responsibility in contributing to the image of refugees and migrants as criminals of refugees by creating a confusion between “Knowledge” and “Opinion”, fact and rumors. Is an ethics of media discourse possible? Fortunately some organizations such as the Media Centar Sarajevo and Raskrinkavanje try to prevent the phenomena, by imposing a time for a deeper analysis of the information for a reconstruction of reflection. Elvira Jukić-Mujkić, editor at Media Centar Sarajevo, will share a part of this reflection.

Criminal ethno-clans have dominated the political scene in Bosnia and Herzegovina for three decades, and the destructive ideologies of the 1990s have never been placed ad acta. Many voters discovered the power of their vote at the local elections, in order to reject the ruling parties in urban centres. In Sarajevo, an alternative block won. The Serbian secessionists surrounding the obstructive member of the BiH Presidency Milorad Dodik suffered a defeat in their stronghold Banja Luka. The voting was accompanied by massive electoral fraud.

The crucial novelty of the Memorandum is its clear distinction of the Joint Commission’s working concepts: it reads that the Macedonian side refuses to accept the concept of "common history" – using "shared history" instead – which in turn undermines the bilateral trust between the two states.

Interview with Prof. Christian Schwarz-Schilling, Former Federal Minister and former EU High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina The interview was conducted by Marion Kraske, Head of the Office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Sarajevo

For twelve years, the citizens of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian city of Mostar have not been able to vote. Thus, Mostar is the only city in Europe in which the right on elections at the local level has been systematically denied. Now there is an agreement between those very extremist representatives who have been preventing the people from going to the polls for years. The deal was also supported by the EU – and the citizens of Mostar are asking indignantly why they were not involved in the political decision-making processes. And why questionable deals are promoted by the state institutions. The agreement, or so the accusations, is only cementing the destructive ethno-nationalism in the country.

The feminist edition of Perspectives Magazine, a regional publication published annually by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, aims to present the perspectives of Southeastern Europe to an international audience, to analyze global and regional trends and to provide insights into developments and political debates. The theme of this year's issue is gender and feminism in the Western Balkans, which is presented through four thematic units (State of the Art, Gender in Transitions: Revolution is Female?, Interventions and Resistance), which gives an overview of the context, perception of gender and the state of women's rights, and opens the issue of gender by social (re-)evolution and conflicts, initiatives and practices that contribute to the dismantling of patriarchy and very concrete practices of resistance in our countries. Through the issues of gender violence, political participation, economic relations, ecology, activism, physicality and from the perspective of female scientists, activists, journalists and writers, we focus on a kind of strategy for women's rights in the Balkans: is it based on the premise that we do not get tired and give up. This issue of Balkan Perspectives was written by women and describes the rights and fights for gender equality which last for generations in the Western Balkans.

Senior Associate of the Democratization Policy Council Bodo Weber says that the agreement reached is not in for the future of Mostar or the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina.