#FEMALEFORWARDINTERNATIONAL: Meet Vukosava Crnjanski from Serbia

Serbia is a country which has been through a lot and so have this country’s tireless activists. Against all odds, the years of slowly building a healthier dialogue about politics, independent journalism, and human rights have not left a mark on Vukosava Crnjanski’s motivation.

She has been an important figure in Serbia’s activist scene for more than 20 years and is the founder and the director of CRTA (Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability), an independent NGO committed to developing democratic culture and civic activism. Vukosava’s work has been commended at an international level: she has received W. Averell Harriman Democracy Award in recognition of her innovation, commitment, and contributions. In 2018, Vukosava and her CRTA team received the Democracy Defender Award from the OSCE. For nearly two decades, Vukosava has worked as the trainer, helping members of other organisations, the media, and political parties develop their political skills, strategies, and organisations.

vukosava crnjanski quote — © Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom

It all started in the late 90s, when she was an active participant in the Civic Alliance of Serbia party’s youth group. Founded in 1992, the Civic Alliance later that decade became the only political organisation in the country led by a woman – Vesna Pešić.

“We were in love with promoting civil rights and pushing democracy values forward”, reminisces Vukosava. She describes the Civic Alliance of Serbia as an “NGO among the parties” – they were engaged in anti-war rhetoric, promoting democracy, and fighting against the authoritarian politics of Slobodan Milošević (1941-2006, President of Yugoslavia between 1992-2000).

In the early 2000s, she realized that she could be more effective operating outside of traditional politics. This led to the creation of the Liberal Network (Linet), an NGO focused on media freedom, preventing hate speech, highlighting cases of conflict of interest, introducing the idea of limiting obligatory army service, and engaging students at faculties and universities, which she describes as “islands of freedom” during the Milošević era. In 2008, inspired by the fact-checking models used during the John McCain / Barack Obama presidential campaign, the team introduced their own platform, “Istinomer” (“Truth-o-meter”) and in turn, started to fact-check elections in Serbia.

In 2010 she was also helped found the Open Parliament, a new initiative on transparent politics, focused on building a bridge between citizens and their representatives.

The culmination of her work and these ideas was transformation of Linet into the Center for Research, Transparency, and Accountability (CRTA) in 2010. Its abbreviation CRTA is pronounced almost like the word “cherta” – a Serbian idiom meaning to “take a challenge” or to “sum up”. Currently, more than 50 people work for or collaborate with this organisation and a lot of them are women. Vukosava says that although they’re not exclusively focused on women’s rights, she likes to think of CRTA as a “women’s organisation”.

Vukosava doesn’t sugar-coat anything and is direct about the political climate of Serbia. “We’re experiencing setbacks. We don’t have the living experience of functioning democracy”, she says. “If you had asked me about the state of political transparency in Serbia in the early 2010’s, I’d say we passed the exam for creating a basic platform for free and fair elections. Today, we have some serious issues.” After the last parliamentary elections in June 2020, which saw President Aleksandar Vučić and his SNS coalition winning with 60,65%, Vukosava feels this is another major setback as Serbia is now led by an almost one-party system.

As a woman in Serbia, standing against the regressive rhetoric of the politicians, Vukosava says she sees more of a structural problem. “In the current political climate, a woman in power is not addressing women’s issues and an LGBT politician is not addressing LGBT topics”, she says, referencing to openly gay but ambivalently received Prime Minister Ana Brnabić, part of the political status quo. “There are welcoming steps in all of this, but from the outside there’s a perspective that it’s all okay, when from the inside, it’s like window dressing. At the end of the day, it's a system from which men benefit.”

The MeToo era has affected Serbia but according to Vukosava: “We don’t have strong institutions to back up these stories and bring big results.”

At the end of the day, what keeps her motivated? “I don’t have the right to give up, I’ve invested so much in empowering the citizens.”

Would it be a right guess if we say she has much more work now in comparison to when she started? “Yes”, she says with an ironic smile, “Unfortunately.”