This post was first published in TH!NK ABOUT IT site 9th February 2009. A lot of interesting marches of progress will take or not take place in West Balkans during 2009. I try to keep my finger on the pulse of developments at least in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia (including Kosovo) where the most interesting [...]

The UN General Assembly chose January 27 as the official day for the commemoration, as it was on this day in 1945 that Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp. Throughout Europe, tributes will be paid to the 53 million people who died during World War II, of whom 31 million were civilians. Commemoration has [...]

Different aspects of freedom, wider human rights and civil liberties, democracy, economical, social and other kind of development are hard to implement if the state is failing or already failed. If an outstanding problem occurs, such as food crisis or a devastating hurricane, the world’s weakest states are the most exposed when crisis strikes. In [...]

One can dispute which level of economic freedom can increase or decrease common welfare for all population but the fact is that poverty sure limits individuals political and human rights as well use of civil liberties.”Poverty” defined as an economic condition of lacking both money and basic necessities needed to successfully live, such as food, [...]

Economic freedom is highly valued element especially in U.S. society and its imitators. Conservative politics claims that greater economic freedom generates opportunities for people, creates wealth and respect for human rights. In Nordic countries the approach is different and the economic freedom of one individual – human or company – can be limited if it [...]

World Audit Org has been conducting sc. Democracy Audit since 1997. Their survey is concerned only with the criteria of democracy – which they hold to be Human Rights; Political Rights; Free Speech and Absence of Corruption. 150 nations, all those with populations in excess of one million are included.  Related to 1st part of [...]

Political freedom is usually described as the absence of interference with the sovereignty of an individual by the use of coercion or aggression.  Often word “Liberty” – the condition in which an individual has the ability to act according to his or her own will -  has been connected to freedom and social anarchists see [...]

Last century was marked deep ethnic tensions between Croats and Serbs. These tensions erupted most violent way during WWII and Yugoslavia’s breakup wars early 1990s. Now this brutal past is going on tables of international courtrooms while Croatian lawsuit against Serbia and Serbia’s countersuit will be heard in Haague. ICJ The International Court of Justice [...]

Countries in Western Balkans have all some European Perspective.  Slovenia is already in, Croatia is hoping to conclude its EU membership talks by the end of 2009, Macedonia has candidate status, membership applications from Montenegro, Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina are in cue, Serbia (with or without Kosovo or part of that) has the Stabilization and Association [...]

On September I wrote here an article “Radical islamist network spreading in Balkans” describing some actual events in Bosnia-Herzegivina. Now a Croatian NGO Libertas made public statement in which it says that Croatians in Bosnia are victims of Bosnian Muslim terror and are asking Bosnian Croat political leadership to initiate a plan that will break [...]