Democracy and Human Rights

As the Kosovo Special Court delivers its verdict in the case against former President Hashim Thaçi and three other former KLA leaders, many Kosovars remain deeply skeptical of its role and legacy.

Kosovo begins excavations at newly discovered mass graves tied to 1998–99 war missing, as information on burial sites has fallen sharply despite a 2023 pledge by Kosovo and Serbia to cooperate in locating the missing.

Serbia (claims it) did not take part in the war in Bosnia. Yet it provided military assistance, handed refugees back into the hands of those they were fleeing, and took part in the killing of civilians. Responsibility did not stop at the border.

Truly, living in a Serbian community over the past few years has become sad and seemingly hopeless. Young people leave after finishing high school, entire families quietly move away, and Srpska Lista wages war against those it claims to represent, a population that is steadily shrinking. 

There are more than 2,000 memorials and statues across Kosovo related to the 1998–99 war, but the authorities lack proper legal guidelines to deal with the chaotic construction of monuments.

In 2025, we mark the thirtieth anniversary of the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. That same year also marks the thirtieth anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica — the first genocide in Europe to be legally recognized after the Second World War.

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.

In Kosovo, a veil of silence has systematically obscured the reality of wartime sexual violence, while only a few memorialization initiatives have sought to expose these crimes and affirm survivors’ experiences.

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. 

Milenko Živanović was acquitted on July 1, 2025, before the Higher Court in Belgrade on all counts of the indictment that charged him with ordering the forcible displacement of civilian population from the zone of responsibility of the Drina Corps, as well as with participating, through his orders and actions, in the forcible displacement of civilians from the protected zone of Srebrenica. The general's defense team included his chosen lawyer, the public prosecutor, and the judicial panel.

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.

The electoral system and the guaranteed seats favor brave new non-majority actors with even minimal levels of voter support, regardless of the level of Serb participation, and can turn them into political kingmakers at local and national levels. Boycotts are a self-defeating strategy, and civil resistance is a good short-term strategy to mobilize and draw attention, but not one that guarantees solutions. The electoral year of 2025 is the moment of truth for Kosovo Serbs.  

In our text on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Kumanovo Agreement, which brought some kind of peace to Kosovo, we were able to speak about some kind of status quo, a situation in which Kosovo could not round out its statehood, yet  Serbia did not try too hard to bring Kosovo back under its authority, settling for influence in the north of Kosovo. However, it could be said that the events of the next five years — on several occasions almost to the point of war — almost completely reversed any progress made in the previous twenty.