Democracy and Human Rights

It seems as though the term citizen does not need a specific explanation. It is an inhabitant of a certain country or a city, a person with legally recognized citizenship, who pays taxes and fulfills their obligations to the community, and enjoys certain rights in return. But how often is that really the case? How many citizens in the world can say that they are true citizens according to this definition? Given the current global situation, not many. In this issue of “Perspectives”, our focus is on citizens and cities in the Western Balkans. A hard copy of this issue you can order from our Belgrade office.

Housing in Serbia is in crisis. Over the last 25 years, housing has been transferred from collective to private ownership, which has shifted responsibility for the provision of housing to the private sector. Smarter Building was initiated in 2012 by the platform Ko Gradi Grad (“Who Builds the City”) to challenge this model.  

If the country goes through profound systemic changes in the political, economic and ideological sense, its dependence on an international environment can intensify considerably. This is exactly what happened in almost all post-communist states, 25 years ago. The need for internationally established models in systems that have recently introduced the development of a political pluralism and democracy as well as solutions to a functional one, and a general opening of society that goes along with the ideal of freedom, has opened the door to external influences. The articles in this issue of the Perspetcives magazine tell different stories about the current challenges of international interventions in Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia.

Universities often teach yesterday’s skills by inertia and their teachers are still compensated generously from the taxpayers’ purse. We live in dynamic times where great syllabi may not be relevant by the time the first graduates that come out of the assembly line. As difficult as it seems, universities should strive to imbue graduates with the skills which will serve them for 40 years of their careers.