Internal threats are the cause of fear in Western Balkans

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Threats to the Western Balkans communities are coming from within and the external actors are used only to intimidate voters, so the role of the civil society organizations is to combat these narratives with knowledge. Those are the conclusions of the second panel of the conference organized by the Belgrade Center for Security Policy (BCSP) on the celebration of 20^TH anniversary, on the November 28^th in Dorcol Platz.

The second panel conference was dedicated to the cooperation of civil society with state authorities, perceptions of threats in the region and the role of civil society in reducing security dilemmas.

We need to make a difference between the perception of citizens and the perception of government when we talk about security challenges in Albania. While citizens associate the main sources of fear with internal events, authorities are striving to assign responsibility for threats to external factors, says Executive Director of the Institute for Democracy and Mediation from Tirana Sotirac Chroni.

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Researcher of Analitika from Skopje, Magdalena Lembovska, said that all parties in Macedonia used ethnic tensions to strengthen their political positions, and that media in this process were often abused for political purposes and at the expense of public interest.

Corruption is the dominant cause of insecurity in Kosovo, while politicians are trying to reduce this threat by saying that it is nothing but the wrong perception of the citizens, says Florian Ćehaja, executive director and one of the founders of the Kosovo Center for Security Studies.

In his opinion, the international community has only pretended that it is solving the problem of corruption, which has been increasing in recent years, and that resulted with even higher level of citizen distrust in the EULEX mission.

The participants agreed that the role of civil society organizations remains very important for overseeing the security sector in the Western Balkans, especially in building integrity and accountability in the times of intimidation.

After the conference, Stevan Dojčinović, Sandra Benčić, Vukašin Obradović, Bobana Macanović and Miroslav Hadžić contributed to the gathering by presenting personal experiences of Breaking Fear.

 

Conference “Breaking Fear: What Can Civil Society Do to Save Accountability of Security Governance in the Time of Fear?“ was organized as part of the BCSP's 20th anniversary celebration. BCSP is the first civil society organization in the Western Balkans specializing in security topics.

 

Translated by BCSP Intern Mijat Kostic