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A BIRN investigation traces at least €250,000 from Serbia's Directorate for the Diaspora to groups across the region. Two Banja Luka recipients campaigned against the 2023 LGBTQ+ event that ended in an attack. Here's what the reporting shows, and what it doesn't.
From a Sarajevo assembly member's Facebook post to Milorad Dodik's public remarks, Bosnian courts have issued a string of rulings this year finding anti-LGBTQ speech illegal. It's slow, but it's building something rare in the region: precedent.
ILGA-Europe and ERA's 2026 Enlargement Review finds that five of ten EU accession hopefuls — including Bosnia and North Macedonia — now have documented LGBTI rights rollbacks, a category that barely existed in prior years' reports.
Sarajevo is one of Europe's most atmospheric capitals — and one of its most complicated for LGBTQ+ visitors. Here's a candid, researched guide to the city where East meets West in the Balkans.
Mostar's Ottoman old town and its famous bridge draw travelers from all over — here's an honest, researched guide to visiting as an LGBTQ+ traveler in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
On the same June Saturday, North Macedonia's eighth Skopje Pride and Bosnia's seventh Sarajevo march took to the streets — smaller than the mega-parades to the west, and arguably braver for it.
North Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina hold their Pride parades on the very same day this year. The shared date is a coincidence of calendars — but the message it sends across the region is anything but accidental.
Bosnia's seventh Pride Week runs June 13–21 with film, drag, workshops and a citywide invitation to hang rainbow colors from your balcony — a quiet act of solidarity in a region facing rising extremism.
As Sarajevo Pride Week opens, Bosnia's queer community is marking real legal firsts and absorbing real setbacks in the same year. A look at where rights actually stand across the country's divided institutions — the progress, the rollbacks, and the gap between Sarajevo and Banja Luka.
Tirana has marched, Sarajevo is next. Across the Western Balkans, Pride organisers are facing an anti-gender movement that is better funded, better organised, and increasingly woven into mainstream politics.
Bosnia and Herzegovina's Pride March returns to Sarajevo on June 20, anchoring a Pride Week of concerts, film, drag and queer-history walks. Here is what is planned and why this march matters.
May 17 lands on Sunday — the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia. From where we're sitting in Tirana, it feels less like a campaign moment and more like a stocktake. Some notes on what's planned across the Balkans.
If Brussels turns this week's parliamentary vote into a binding directive, six candidate countries will have to follow. Five of them have no ban on conversion practices at all.
From Belgrade to Sarajevo, same-sex couples face illness, bereavement, and parenthood without the legal standing every married heterosexual couple takes for granted. A decade of Pride marches has not yet produced a single enforceable partnership law across most of the region.
The Basic Court in Banja Luka has found that the former Republika Srpska president's 2023 statements about LGBTI Bosnians created 'a hostile and offensive environment.' It's one of the first rulings in the region to hold a top politician personally accountable for discriminatory speech.
A cantonal court has upheld the conviction of a former MP who called for LGBTQ+ people to be 'isolated and kept away from children.' It took 13 years for Bosnia's anti-discrimination law to produce its first verdict on sexual orientation — and now that verdict has survived appeal.
The Balkans are changing fast — but unevenly. Montenegro has legal civil unions. Serbia blocks progress despite 80% public support. Kosovo's PM is pushing for change. Bosnia's Ministry of Health is actively obstructing a partnership bill. Here's the full picture.
