BIRN Funds Projects to Research War Crime Case Archives

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network has selected 13 journalists, historians, artists and activists to receive grants to create small projects based on the archives of the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague and domestic courts in former Yugoslav countries.

The recipients of the grants will conduct research, collect documents and dig deeper into the courts' archives in order to produce projects about issues of justice and the Yugoslav wars.

BIRN initially planned to fund ten small projects, but due to the large number of high-quality applications, decided to increase the number of grants and fund 13 grantees to explore court archives.

The projects will include journalistic pieces, educational workshops, research papers, a documentary film, audiovisual work and a visual project.

They will explore topics such as gender-based violence, memory, Roma war victims, witness testimonies, war crimes, sexual violence, the experience of women in war and the role of photography in prosecuting war crimes.

Nejra Mulaomerovic, programme associate at BIRN's Balkan Transitional Justice programme, said that archives play an important role in ensuring that the past is properly documented.

"The archives themselves are not a guarantee of the non-recurrence of conflicts, but if they are used by various actors from different research and academic backgrounds, they can contribute to raising awareness and can be used as tools to spark dialogue and inspire others to continue their efforts to seek justice and truth," Mulaomerovic said.

"With these grants, BIRN continues to support activists, artists, historians and journalists to increase knowledge about the role of archives in transitional justice processes," she added.

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