Gordana Igric

The Vienna office of the Reporters Without Borders announced that the BIRN Network has been awarded for its courageous investigative journalism in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, and for its dedication to the fight for human rights, democracy and justice for the victims of war crimes.

Marija Ristic has been appointed as BIRN's Regional Network Director, effective from May 1 this year.

She will lead the BIRN Hub, which coordinates the BIRN network, dealing with editorial, training, operations and development, as well as developing, fundraising for and coordinating core regional projects.

The Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize - which honours outstanding civil society action in defence of human rights - was awarded on Monday to Nadia Murad, a Yazidi rights activist who was kidnapped and detained by Islamic State, ISIS, in Iraq in 2014.

The Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize - which honours outstanding civil society action in defence of human rights - is to be awarded at a special ceremony on the opening day of the autumn plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on Monday.

BIRN regional director Gordana Igric is among the three candidates for the award this year.

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network's regional media conference, entitled 'Media Freedom Challenges', will be held on Friday June 12, in Sarajevo, where BIRN's directors and media experts will debate the main obstacles to media freedom in the Balkans.

BIRN Serbia and Human Right House organised the first in a series of debates on media freedom on Thursday in Belgrade's Media Centre.

"Vesna Bjekic was a trustworthy colleague, a dear friend and in a sense our guardian, always ready to remind younger journalists in BIRN about the Milosevic era and about what journalism was like back then, always warning us about the dangers recent history repeating itself.

BRUSSELS - The European Parliament (EP) will hold a panel on media in Serbia featuring participation by representatives of journalists’ associations in the country and its government on Tuesday afternoon.