Role of civil society in promotion and protection of whistleblowers

1. Role of civil society in promotion and protection of whistleblowers Regional Workshop on Whistleblower Protection in Security Sector Podgorica 7-8 May 2019

2. Southeast Europe Coalition on Whistleblower Protection • The Southeast Europe Coalition on Whistleblower Protection is the world’s only regional organization that specializes in protecting whistleblowers, strengthening whistleblower rights, and utilizing whistleblowing as a crime-fighting and anti-corruption tool. • Founded in 2015, the Coalition is comprised of some 20 NGOs, journalism groups, research institutions and independent experts from 16 Southeast and Eastern European countries, as well as several regional and international organizations. • Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine. https://see-whistleblowing.org/

3. Southeast Europe Coalition on Whistleblower Protection • The Coalition core priorities: • developing and advocating for new and improved whistleblower protection laws • supporting and advising individual whistleblowers • investigating and publicizing whistleblower disclosures and retaliation complaints • launching new and expanding existing civil society campaigns • ensuring whistleblower laws are properly enforced and implemented • raising public awareness of whistleblowing’s role in enhancing accountability and justice

4. Ensuring whistleblower laws are properly enforced and implemented • advocating for reforms to laws, policies and practices where needed, based on documented failures in the system • meeting with public authorities to ensure official procedures are being followed • identifying new cases and retaliation complaints • contacting whistleblowers (when possible) to determine whether official procedures are being followed • reporting case outcomes and other findings to the public, the media and all relevant stakeholders

5. Supporting and advising individual whistleblowers • determine the person’s individual needs. • providing detailed, individualized advice and direction on how – or whether – to make a report, and to whom the report should be made • providing information on the person’s legal rights in his/her country • forwarding the person’s information to an authority or regulator, while preserving the person’s anonymity • referring the person to a journalist for possible media coverage of the issue • referring the person to an attorney for additional advice possible representation • intervening with authorities and regulators to help ensure the person’s report and/or retaliation complaint is thoroughly investigated and any whistleblower policies are properly followed

6. Raising public awareness of whistleblowing’s role in enhancing accountability and justice • Changing public perceptions has the important added value of empowering employees to come forward with reports of crime, corruption and public health dangers. • more reports lead to greater citizens awareness, which leads to more reports. • Public outreach efforts, • media, • websites • social media • public events

8. International Whistleblower Day • 2017 in Skopje • 2018 in Prishtina • 2019 in Tirana • The Free Speech Award, awarded to whistleblowers or activists

9. Free Speech Award 2018 Gjorgi Lazarevski and Zvonko Kostovski exposed covertly recorded wiretaps of political opponents that were allegedly recorded by the government of former Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski. Murat Mehmeti publicly disclosed the organized network of fiscal evasion of more than 200 Kosovar businesses worth million of Euros

10. Free Speech Award 2019 • Klodiana Lala, n investigative journalist in Albania for more than 15 years, covering crime and corruption for channel 24-TV News – including misconduct committed by politicians and their associates.