Publications

Energy Poverty, Vulnerability, and Human Rights in BiH: A Historical and Contemporary Analysis

Energy Poverty, Vulnerability, and Human Rights in BiH: A Historical and Contemporary Analysis

Published: 29 November 2022
Analysis

Across Europe, the awareness on energy poverty is growing rapidly and the issue is being increasingly integrated within the activities of the European Union, evidenced by the European Commission’s flagship legislative proposal “Clean Energy for All Europeans” announced on 30th November 2016. Some of the leading institutions working on energy poverty are the EU Energy Poverty Observatory and the European Energy Community. The EU Energy Poverty Observatory urges all relevant stakeholders working on energy poverty to build and expand a specialist network dedicated to addressing the issue across the Continent. According to their official website, the Observatory has been developed by 13 different institutions, including organizations, universities, and businesses. The advisory board is comprised of over 70 leading stakeholders from across Europe and it was officially established in 2018. Its creation is an effort of the European Commission to address energy poverty in a more systematic way, provide resources for public engagement, disseminate information and facilitate knowledge sharing.

Zelena tranzicija i socijalna (ne)pravda

Perspectives - Green transition and social (in)justice

Published: 23 December 2021

There is a great difference between a mere survival of the humankind and the preservation of quality of life. That is why the role of justice in the green transition goes far beyond the entitlement to a safe and healthy environment. The coming climate crisis takes place in a world characterized by a whole variety of injustices, which affect all human rights. These injustices will probably be exacerbated by the crisis, on one hand because of deteriorating conditions and on the other due to weakening of social security policies and measures against growing inequalities.
 

Therefore, our problem is twofold: to develop strategies and policies of a green transition to decarbonised manufacturing, agriculture, and transport; and to do it in a way which not only does not deepen injustices and inequalities but creates conditions for life with dignity for all. In other words, the fundamental change of human relation to nature should be accompanied by a similarly fundamental change in social relationships.

25 Years after Dayton - Path for a Democratic and Prosperous Bosnia and Herzegovina

25 Years after Dayton - Path for a Democratic and Prosperous Bosnia and Herzegovina

Published: 13 February 2021

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.

Perspectives magazin

Perspectives - Women in the Western Balkans - Rights and Fights

Published: 30 October 2020
Publication

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.

Discussion paper - EU and migrant crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina_0

Discussion Paper

Published: 6 April 2020
Publication

Is EU (un)intentionally uses a so-called ‘pseudoconditionality’ action pattern and discourse in supporting the migration crisis management in BiH.

Perspectives Cover

Perspectives - "Stabilocracy" and/or radicalisation

Published: 19 November 2019
Publication

There is a grotesque reversal of the paradigm of law and order. Neither laws nor international standards determine what is rightful, but criminal power cartels, which show close overlapping with the dominant parties. As a consequence, thereof, personal and human rights are largely undermined, the individual barely stands a chance in those structures outside the legal jurisdiction to assert his/her rights. The EU, has not been able to contain those destructive forces and to emphatically campaign for its agenda – democracy, liberality, diversity.

With its trepidation, which the EU displayed already during the Bosnian War, the EU now fails anew to defend European values in the Balkans. This however increasingly also endangers the EU in its very foundations: raging destructing ideologies, which have forged ahead during the 1990ies, now bounce back into the EU and endanger the cohesion inside the Union.

Perspectives - Captured states in the Balkans

Published: 29 September 2017
publication

Diese Ausgabe des Perspectives Magazins beschäftigt sich mit dem Captured-States-Phänomen - Korruption und Nepotismus und die Auswirkungen auf den Rechtsstaat und das leben der Bürger/innen Bosnien-Herzegowinas. AUch die Vergabe von Arbeitsplätzen an taugliche, aber nicht kompetente Personen, der Einfluß von Politik auf Bildung, Pressefreiheit, Nationalismus als politisches Instrument der Machterhaltung und andere Themen werden in dieser Ausgabe genauer beleuchtet.

Das Magazin ist in englischer Sprache verfasst.

Legal Instruments for the Environmental Protection

Published: 11 April 2017

Ova publikacija je nastala u okviru projekta “Advocacy NGOs Networks for Sustainable Use of Energy and Natural Resources in the Western Balkans and Turkey – ETNAR”, u kojem je hbs jedan od partnera. Glavni cilj publikacije je pomoći nevladinim organizacijama iz Bosne i Hercegovina, Hrvatske, Srbije, Crne Gore, Turske, Makedonije, Albanije i Kosova u zaštiti okoliša i zagovaranju održivog upravljanja energetskim i prirodnim resursima. Pravni instrumenti mogu biti moćan instrument u aktivnostima zagovaranja organizacija civilnog društva ukoliko one znaju kako i kada da ih koriste u svojim zagovaračkim kampanjama.

Substantial Change on the Horizon? A Monitoring Report on the EU’s New Bosnia and Herzegovina Initiative

Published: 3 April 2017

The implementation process of the reform agenda has shown that the leading international actors in BiH are well able to push the country towards a sustainable reform course. This has primarily demonstrated the application of strict conditionality by the IMF. The fact that the EU initiative has so far produced only limited results was not due to the fact that a policy of conditionality in BiH does not work or can function, as many EU officials regularly claim, but because of the lack of political will of the EU, conditionality and consistency strictly apply.

Perspectives - Die 'Internationale Gemeinschaft' und die Limits der externen Interventionen

Published: 29 November 2016

Wenn der Staat tiefgreifende politische, wirtschaftliche und ideologische Veränderungen vornimmt, kann seine Abhängigkeit von einer internationalen Umgebung wachsen. Genau das ist vor 25 Jahren in fast allen post-kommunistischen Staaten geschehen. Die Notwendigkeit für internationale Modelle in Systemen, die einen politischen Pluralismus und Demokratie als Staatsform eingeführt haben und sich nach Außen hin öffnen, öffnen auch Einflüssen von Außen das Tor.

Die Artikel in dieser Ausgabe erzählen verschiedene Geschichten über die Herausforderungen der internationalen Interventionen in  Albanien, Bosnien und Herzegowina, Kroatien, Mazedonien und Serbien.