24 July 2020 – Balkans Group organised an online workshop on the Kosovo- Serbia technical dialogue, with citizens of North Mitrovica. Through this event, BPRG aimed to expand citizens’ involvement and understanding on the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue process.
Due to its nature, the workshop was structured in one session. Initially, participants were given narratives of some of the agreements and were encouraged to discuss their content. Each narrative provided a brief summary of the specific agreement by focusing on three main segments: introduction of the agreement, state of implementation and the challenges and benefits.
During this workshop, citizens had the opportunity to share their ideas and opinions regarding the content; which was presented to them, and to contribute to its objectiveness.
Citizens welcomed BPRG’s initiative to increase their involvement in the process; and emphasized the necessity to focus on the everyday effects or challenges that citizens of Kosovo face (based on their ethnicity) due to insufficient progress on the normalisation of relations between Pristina and Belgrade.
Participants were also asked to fill a short online survey, which was supposed to encourage them to brainstorm and express their opinions on the dialogue, anonymously.
Based on the conducted survey, BPRG found that the citizens were moderately informed about the dialogue process and that the main sources of information were social networks and academic papers and reports. “The impact of the agreement” and their “State of Implementation” were underlined as the main components that need to be presented to the general public, when referring to the agreements.
This workshop was organized as part of the project “Advancing Kosovo Institutions, Democratisation and Regional Cooperation” and falls under one of the regional cooperation pillars of the project, which aims to promote and support the dialogue on normalisation of relations between Kosovo and Serbia. This activity is funded by the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Pristina.
