Ana Novaković, Executive Director of the Center for Development of Non-Governmental Organizations in Montenegro, introduces the Southeast Europe Coalition on Whistleblower Protection.

Bosnia and Herzegovina made history in 2014, becoming the first country in the world to develop a whistleblower protection system designed to protect whistleblowers before workplace retaliation gets out of control, and without the need to go to court to exercise their rights.

This is a story of corruption, whistleblowing, retaliation and broken lives. It is not an easy story to stomach. But it is an essential story. It highlights, all too graphically, what we in the whistleblower protection movement are fighting for – and why.

Two Southeast European countries are becoming showcases for how laws, institutions and NGOs – if given the chance – can protect whistleblowers effectively.

Thanks to whistleblowers within Macedonia’s farming industry, investigative journalists learned that the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management demanded local companies pay to renovate one of its buildings – even though the state had already funded the work.