Peer-to-Peer Regional Meeting of Public Institutions for stronger whistleblower protection held in Sarajevo

The Third Peer-to-Peer Regional Meeting of Public Institutions: ‘Ensuring Strong Protections for Employees who Report Wrongdoing’, hosted by the Regional Anti-Corruption Initiative Secretariat was held in Sarajevo on January 31, 2023. The meeting aimed at discussing the strategies to assist and protect whistleblowers based on lessons learned from real success stories of public institutions, as well as institutional needs to achieve an effective whistleblower protection system. The purpose of the training is to provide support to public institutions in identifying well-functioning aspects of their system and areas for improvement that can be used for organizational strengthening, strategic planning purposes and budget planning. Additionally, the peer-to-peer meeting provided participants with practical knowledge about transparency requirements and solutions relevant to assessing the impact of whistleblower protection laws – all in line with the EU Whistleblower Protection Directive.

According EU Delegation to BiH/EUSR representative,  Head of Rule of Law Section Alfredo Strippoli, the EU expects the recomendations from the Gap Analysis of Whistleblower Protection Laws in the Western Balkans and Moldova, produced by RAI Secretariat, to be used for basis of legislative solutions. “We call on institutions representatives to use the Gap Analysis recommendations and actively engage on their implementation”, said Stripolli.

In order to encourage a structured and solution orientated discussion, RAI Secretariat international experts utilized the Self-Assessment Tool for Whistleblower Protection Systems, developed under the Project to identify the unmet organizational needs and draft a recommended roadmap for effective whistleblower protection systems.

The Self-Assessment Tool for Whistleblower Protection Systems was also in this way promoted as a tool that enables an organization to assess whether it fulfils human resource and organizational requirements to enable an effective and efficient response to a whistleblower report (available in English language and Albanian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian/Montenegrin, Macedonian and Romanian languages).

The Peer-to-Peer Regional Meeting of Public Institutions is a forum at which challenges, opportunities and progress in whistleblowing reform and whistleblower protection are shared and discussed at technical level. The meetings are structured and facilitated in such a way to encourage a solution orientated discussion.

The Peer-to-Peer Regional Meeting of Public Institutions was facilitated as part of the four-day regional meeting on whistleblower protection, organized under the auspices of the regional project ‘Breaking the Silence: Enhancing the whistleblowing policies and culture in Western Balkans and Moldova’, which is funded by the European Union and implemented by the RAI Secretariat. This event gathered representatives of public institutions, anti-corruption agencies, ministries of justice and ombudsman institutions from the project beneficiary jurisdictions including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo*, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia.