Pooling efforts is a key to boosting societal resilience to organized crime

“Governments in the region are struggling with organized crime for decades. That is why the bottom-up approach is essential to pressure governments and their fragile institutions and involve citizens in this process,” said BCSP Director Igor Bandovic, opening the discussion.

In Western Balkans, there is a lack of trust between governments and civil society organizations. Statistical and administrative data on organized crime is often lacking. In some cases, civil society organizations are under pressure from the governments and work in a hostile environment.

“The relevance of civil society reflects the key elements of the Nordic model – successful fight against organized crime and corruption must include civil society’s active role. In my country, civil society stands out as an important contributor to democratic values and social cohesion as the government’s strategic partner. With the local authorities, these organizations are listened to, and many of them are included in policy planning.”, said H.E. Mr. Jørn Gjelstad, Ambassador of Norway to Serbia.

H.E. Ms. Anne-Sietske Brinks, Deputy Head of Mission of the Dutch Embassy to Serbia, pointed out the importance of the fight against organized crime for the progress in the rule of law area for the Serbian EU accession process.

“Corruption is the crucial facilitator for organized crime and also a factor explaining the deficiencies of policy interventions,” Ms. Brinks concluded, linking the rule of law areas reform to the success in the fight against organized crime.

In the first panel, members of the Organized Crime Radar network, researchers Dragana Jaćimović from Institute Alternative in Podgorica, and Imer Dulaš from Center for Security Studies in Sarajevo talked about obstacles of researching organized crime in the Western Balkans.  They both agreed that the data is hard to come by and that there is a lack of transparency regarding the work of law enforcement institutions, for instance, on the issues of what happened to some organized criminal groups or how the trials ended. Dragana pointed out that the biggest issue in Montenegro are long trials that end in confidential pre-agreements. Emir agreed and added that in Bosnia and Herzegovina problem for successfully researching this phenomena is the fact that there are too many security agencies, addinfg that on top of this isntitituonal challenge, the reports lack consistency and data is not comparable, which makes impossible to properly analyze the issues and see the results.

Tejal Jesrani Haslinger, UNODC Research Officer, pointed out that the data collected and analyzed suggests that the pressure from the EU on Western Balkan countries resulted in higher levels of prosecutions that rose six-fold but that the number of final convictions declined significantly at the same time.

“People arrested and prosecuted are low-level offenders and are easily detached from the group. Those people most often deny being a part of the organized criminal group in fear of retaliation or strong convictions,” she said and concluded that this is the reason why organized criminal groups mostly get away intact.

Talking about the role of the civil society organizations in the second panel, researchers from Albania, North Macedonia and Kosovo all agreed that there is a greater need for civil society organizations to work closely on an international level to fight against organized crime. Another problem is with a narrow focus of civil society organizations caused by the project-based approach, partially caused by the donor’s insufficiently adapted policies to local contexts.

Researchers Redion Qirjazi, from Institute for Democracy and Mediation in Tirana, and Ivan Stefanovski, from Eurothink in Skopje, both agreed that the relationship between institutions and civil society organizations, which is needed for tackling this problem, is not based on trust and that, in some cases, civil society organizations are falsely accused and threatened because of their findings.

Kristina Amerhauser, analyst of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, pointed out that, to effectively fight against organized crime, civil society organizations have to bring the problem closer to the community and explain why is it important, preserve objectiveness and political neutrality in their work, and expand the network of civil society organizations and support each other.  Reflecting on the fact that some civil society organizations work under pressure and are labeled as anti-government organizations, Kristina said they also need to balance the criticism with constructively engaging with the governments. Speaking of the key areas where civil society can contribute, she pointed out the need to raise awareness of the organized crime problem through media, follow court procedures, and keep pressure on the institutions.

“There needs to be transparency from institutions so that civil society organizations can work as they should. Communication is the key towards fighting against organized crime.” Shpat Balaj, researcher at the Kosovo Centre for Security Studies, concluded.

This event was supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Belgrade, Royal Norwegian Embassy in Belgrade and the Balkan Trust for Democracy, a project of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.