Bosnia and Herzegovina

Drag show at Kvirhana Queer Festival in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Photo: SOC/Asja Mustajbasic.

The Venice Commission, the Council of Europe's constitutional law experts, and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, ODIHR, have warned that the new draft law in Bosnia's Republika Srpska entity on the "Special Registry and Publicity of the Work of Non-Profit Organisation", dubbed the "foreign agents law", "contains serious deficiencies".

On Thursday, Croats gathered on the 1,600-metre mountain, some 15 kilometres from the small town that carries the same name, to commemorate the attack on what was the 20th 'convoy of life' bringing aid to the Lasva river basin, split at the time between government and Croat forces called HVO.

A teacher has been shot and is undergoing medical treatment after a 13-year-old opened fire in an elementary school in Lukavac in northeast Bosnia on Wednesday morning. 

"The suspect is a child who is not yet 14 years old (born in late June 2009). The child is being held at Lukavac Police Department," Admir Arnautovic, Tuzla Canton Prosecutor's Office's spokesperson, told the media. 

A group of 20 civil society organisations from Bosnia and Herzegovina, gathered in the Initiative for Monitoring European Integration, has issued a warning on "the shortcomings of the Draft Law on Freedom of Access to Information of Bosnia and Herzegovina," which Bosnia's state-level government, the Council of Ministers, adopted on April 12. 

The question of rehabilitation and reintegration of war criminals has not attracted much attention either in the countries of the former Yugoslavia or internationally. This is somewhat odd considering that 59 of 91 individuals sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY have already been released from prison after serving sentences for grave crimes.

Researcher Saša Čaval from the Institute of Anthropological and Spatial Studies has won the European Research Council Consolidator Grant for her project to research stećci, large medieval tombstones found across the Western Balkans.

The Association of Victims and Witnesses of Genocide on Monday asked the president of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, Graciela Gatti Santana, to review the 2014 early release of convicted Bosnian Croat war criminal Dario Kordic.

But editors and journalists in Bosnia tell BIRN they struggle with its inconsistency in content moderation and a lack of transparency about its algorithms. And when they call Facebook for clarification, too often they are left hanging.

"If the situation becomes increasingly unstable, if it starts escalating again, of course, that is an option," Wigemark said.
Let us remind you that after the escalation of the situation in the north of Kosovo and Metohija, NATO announced that it would send an additional 700 soldiers to the north, the so-called Kosovo.