Democracy and Human Rights

The wave of anti-corruption protests that began at the end of 2024 is unprecedented in its scope in Serbia's democratic history. The ways students used popular digital platforms deserve credit for this.

Kosovo is navigating the complex process of moving from a divided memorialization of the past toward a dialogue that transcends simplistic narratives.

Local elections in Kosovo, often overshadowed by national politics, are once again burdened by unresolved questions of sovereignty, legitimacy, and ethnic division. The crisis in the Serb-majority North reveals how deeply national conflicts continue to shape local governance and daily life.

Local elections in Kosovo, often overshadowed by national politics, are once again burdened by unresolved questions of sovereignty, legitimacy, and ethnic division. The crisis in the Serb-majority North reveals how deeply national conflicts continue to shape local governance and daily life.

In November 2024, the collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad killed 16 people and sparked the largest student-led protests in Serbia's modern history. Initial grief gave way to a decentralised movement that is demanding accountability, far-reaching reforms and new elections, despite brutal repression by the regime. The protests have exposed the failure of 'stabilitocracy' and brought Serbia's democratic future — and the EU's role in it — to the forefront of political debate.

More than 25 years after the bombing campaign that ended the war in Kosovo, this conversation between Granit Gashi and Nemanja Georgijević, now colleagues at the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Belgrade, displays their parallel yet contrasting experiences – one as a child refugee forced from his Peja home, the other as a four-year-old in Belgrade learning about the world through state television and family conversations – illuminating how the same historical moment was experienced and processed differently on each side. Interview by Milan Bogdanović. 

While Brussels may see the Jadar lithium mining project as a strategic step toward a greener future, Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić sees it as a tactical tool to reinforce his grip on power - just as hundreds of thousands rise to reclaim democracy.

In literal terms a harasser comes at me physically, but it's really my focus, attention, and sense of freedom he walks away with.In Kosovo, we have experienced large-scale gender liberalization in real terms (members of parliament, women in workforce, higher education attainment rates) since the war in ‘99, but we have not shaken off the more subtle lived-experienced elements of the patriarchy, such as the tax of harassment.