Na konferenciji za medije u srijedu, 14. 01. 2009. godine u zgradi Institucija BiH, Ministarstvo prometa i komunikacija BiH, Regulatorna agencija za komunikacije i DTT Foruma su predstavili nacrt Strategije prelaska s analogne na digitalnu zemaljsku radiodifuziju u Bosni i Hercegovini. Nacrt Strategije je upućen na javne konsultacije, te se pozivaju svi zainteresovani da dostave svoje komentare na email dttforum@rak.ba ili na adresu: Mehmeda Spahe 1, Sarajevo, Regulatorna agencija za komunikacije sa naznakom za “DTT Forum“, najkasnije do 14.02.2009. godine.

Politics and Religion Volume II (No. 2) - Autumn 2008. TOPIC OF THIS ISSUE: THE CONTEMPORARY ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH AND POLITICS

US official warns that lack of progress by Bosnia threatens to delay the international community's handover of its supervisory role to the EU. Plans for the European Union to take over the co-ordination of the international presence in Bosnia and Herzegovina this June are in danger of being delayed, a senior US diplomat has said.

We are happy to present the January issue of A Different View, the monthly political online journal of IAPSS. The articles are selected, layouted and published by the Tobias Franke, Felipe Nunes and Thomas Bobinger. The editors have managed to include a wide range of interesting articles on the "transatlantic relationship, the US and the EU in the light of President Obama's inauguration as 44th President of the USA.

IN ALMOST any discussion of world affairs, there is one thing on which doves and hawks invariably agree: much more needs to be done to shore up states that are failing, in a state of collapse, or so poor that they are heading in that direction.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

EU foreign and security policy; Security sector reform and police reform in the Western Balkans; Arms Control

Russia has lost an empire and not yet found a role. As we approach the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we should pay tribute again to the fact that a nuclear-armed superpower surrendered its vast continental empire with scarcely a shot fired in anger. Unfortunately, many Russians have been regretting that act of historic magnanimity ever since.

Hapšenje Radovana Karadžića bilo je, sasvim sigurno, medijski najzanimljiviji događaj 2008. godine. Ipak, generalna slika izvještavanja o tome u medijima u Srbiji, Crnoj Gori, Bosni i Hercegovini, Hrvatskoj i na Kosovu, pokazuje da je javnost, u poplavi vijesti u vezi sa hapšenjem, ostala uskraćena za neke osnovne, a veoma bitne informacije.

Social Protection and Social Inclusion in BiH, European Commission, July 2008.

The current economic crisis has highlighted many of the EU’s political characteristics. Initially it highlighted the EU’s weaknesses and exposed its institutional and political limitations. It appeared, as it often does, as a collection of national interests and policies. Then however, it began showing some of its strengths, i.e. that with cooperation and concerted action it is uniquely capable of influencing global developments.

Bosnia is not the only western Balkan country that is going through a difficult patch. As it marks its first anniversary of independence, Kosovo remains unreconciled to Serbia (see article). Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia have all run into different obstacles on their long road towards the European Union. But Bosnia may be the most troubled of all.

Dr. Edin Šarčević, izvanredni profesor na Pravnom Fakultetu Univerziteta u Leipzigu u svom članku „Dejtonski ustav: karakteristike i problemi“ predstavlja svoj pogled na navedenu tematiku.

It has been a long time since the United States paid serious high-level attention to Bosnia. After the 1995 Dayton Accords ended the genocidal horrors, Washington moved on to other priorities and largely left oversight of the peace agreement to Europe. Now it’s time to seriously re-engage before the deal unravels.

The government's human rights record remained poor. Although there were improvements in some areas, serious problems remained. There were reports of continued deaths from landmines, police abuses, poor and overcrowded prison conditions, increased harassment and intimidation of journalists and members of civil society, discrimination and violence against women and ethnic and religious minorities, discrimination against persons with disabilities and sexual minorities, obstruction of refugee return, trafficking in persons, and limits on employment rights. At year's end, Ratko Mladic, the war crimes suspect most wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), remained at large.

Novi broj časopisa Status.

TUMBLING exchange rates, gaping current-account deficits, fearsome foreign-currency borrowings and nasty recessions: these sound like the ingredients of a distant third-world-debt crisis from the 1980s and 1990s. Yet in Europe the mess has been cooked up closer to home, in east European countries, many of them now members of the European Union. One consequence is that older EU countries will find themselves footing the bill for clearing it up.

Although controversial, electoral gender quotas are in use in almost half of the countries in the world today. Until recently, Europe has not been in the forefront of this new development. However, this report shows that five European Union (EU)/European Economic Area (EEA) countries have introduced gender quotas by law – most recently Spain, Portugal and Slovenia – and that in more than half of the EU/EEA countries some of the political parties have adopted voluntary party quotas for their electoral lists.

While Bosnia and Herzegovina’s time as an international protectorate is ending, which is in itself most welcome, now is the wrong time to rush the transition. The state put together by the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement after a long war will never be secure and able to take its place in the European Union (EU) until it is responsible for the consequences of its own decisions. But tensions are currently high and stability is deteriorating, as Bosniaks and Serbs play a zero-sum game to upset the Dayton settlement. Progress toward EU membership is stalled, and requirements set in 2008 for ending the protectorate have not been not met.

As far back as 2003, the EU pledged to begin discussions with the governments of the Western Balkans on the reforms necessary to lift the visa requirement for entering the Schengen area. (...) Applying for a Schengen visa is time-consuming, costly and stressful. People throughout the region perceive the visa requirement as personal rejection, unable to reconcile it with the offer of a future in the EU. (...) In 2008, the EU at last formulated a series of demanding requirements, assigning concrete "visa roadmaps" for each country – visa-free travel being the reward for meeting these benchmarks. The goal of ESI's Schengen White List Project is to contribute to the abolition of the visa restrictions for the Western Balkans on the basis of this approach.

The paper provides a historical-sociological investigation of post-communist dual citizenship policies in Central and Eastern Europe, proposing to conceive of citizenship as a means of state building. While dual citizenship policies in Western Europe generally took an inclusionary form, generated by the stringent need to incorporate and assimilate foreign immigrants, and to come to terms with their colonial and world expanding capitalist past, in Central and Eastern Europe they have essentially been differentialist, putting emphasis on ethno-cultural distinctions and privileged historical relationship with a state. In an attempt to synthesize the dominant motives governing the strategies chosen by these states, in the second part of the paper dual citizenship practices are inventoried according to a typology that reveals different state rationalities. Finally, an examination of asymmetries in dual citizenship aims both to further the state building argument, and to point to the tensions inherent in dual citizenship legislation.

It isn’t just newspapers: much of the established news industry is being blown away. Yet news is thriving.

Next week, Monday, 25 May 2009, the Commission will discuss its newest assessment reports on the issue with EU member states' officials. For more detailed information on the assessments please look at our exclusive Scorecard of Schengen White List Conditions (22 May 2009). These assessments conclude – based on the most thorough expert assessments ever undertaken in the fields of document security, border control, migration management and security – that Macedonia meets the conditions for visa-free travel, that Montenegro and Serbia meet most of the conditions for visa-free travel, and that Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania do not (yet) meet the conditions for visa free travel.

European Commission Assessment: BiH and the Visa Free Travel (May 2009)

On the streets of Belgrade, Karadzic rumors flew. Some said he was living the rugged life of a guerrilla hero in the mountains. Others believed he was in exile in Eastern Europe or South America. So most Balkan watchers were honestly stunned when Dabic was arrested last summer on a city bus, tooling around Belgrade like any other regular Slobodan. With a haircut and a shave, the Multi-Zap Zapping radiestician instantly disappeared, and there, soon enough in the papers for all to see, were the confident eyes, the clear jawline and the telltale bouffant of Radovan Karadzic.

The administration of Mostar is collapsing, a warning sign for Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). There has been no mayor, budget or functioning city council since an October 2008 election; tension threatens to poison relations between the leading Bosniak and Croat parties, which are coalition partners throughout BiH. The crisis is rooted in ethnic demographics, recent conflict history and a city statute that replicates many of the power-sharing rules that govern the state. Mostar’s Croat majority, much like the state’s Bosniak majority, chafes against these rules, considering them illegitimate and foreign-imposed, and seeks to force the Office of the High Representative (OHR – the international community’s peace implementation body) to impose a solution on its behalf. Yet, a fair solution is within the council’s competence and, like the city’s chronic grievances, can best be handled without the High Representative using his extraordinary (Bonn) powers. The international community should deliver the message that fourteen years after the end of their war, it is time for the Bosnians to take responsibility for their own futures.

Case studies – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo

Introduction

There is no doubt that the states of the Western Balkans belong to the European Union. However, their road to the EU is by no means an easy one. The entire Western Balkan region is not only encumbered by the maladies related to its communist past, but also by the problems the region has more recently experienced due to the horrors of war. Many of the ethnic tensions have not yet cooled down.

Ovaj izvještaj dokumentira kako su vlasti u Bosni i Hercegovini (BiH) zapostavile svoju obavezu da pruže pravdu i odštetu preživjelima ratnih zločina seksualnog nasilja koji su se desili u kontekstu rata 1992.-1995. Tako postupajući, vlasti su prekršile ljudska prava preživjelih.

This report analyses the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina in terms of the political and economic criteria for membership; reviews Bosnia and Herzegovina’s capacity to implement European standards, i.e. to gradually approximate its legislation and policies with the acquis, in line with the Stabilisation and Association Agreement and the European Partnership priorities. This report covers the period from early October 2008 to mid- September 2009. Progress is measured on the basis of decisions taken, legislation adopted and measures implemented. As a rule, legislation or measures which are being prepared or awaiting parliamentary approval have not been taken into account. This approach ensures equal treatment across all reports and permits an objective assessment.

Paket ustavnih promjena koje su bosanskohercegovačkim političarima ponudili predstavnici Evropske unije i Sjedinjenih Američkih Država sadrži niz promjena na državnom nivou vlasti. Svaka alternativa bolja je od postojećeg stanja, smatraju analitičari. Kao posebno bitnu izdvajaju insistiranje da država preuzme nadležnosti koje su neophodne za pristupanje evroatlantskim integracijama.

George Soros 2009 lectures at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.

Izvještaj Međunarodne krizne grupe (International Crisis Group - ICG) o situaciji u BiH i opcijama koje stoje pred domaćim i stranim političkim akterima.

Nacionalni izvještaj o humanom razvoju (NHDR) za 2009. godinu društveno povjerenje postavlja u širi konceptualni okvir društvenog kapitala s ciljem istraživanja različitih dimenzija društvenih veza te dubljeg istraživanja niskog nivoa povjerenja. Cilj je unaprijediti naše razumijevanje veza među članovima društva u BiH – neformalnih porodičnih i veza s neposrednim lokalnim susjedstvom te formalnih udruženja, klubova i organizacija.