Hi everyone!

It’s now my third week here in Kosovo. It’s quite beyond me how I’m going to cover everything that’s happened so far in a single blog entry, but regardless, I will do my best.

From the very beginning of our trip, the one thing that struck me is the open friendliness of everyone we meet. While the majority of the time this makes the trip even more enriching, we probably could have done without the man in the airport telling us that we would be happy to leave at the end of our internship. Thus far, however, he couldn’t have been more wrong.

Pristina is fantastic – cafes and bars everywhere you look, and everyone is always out. The food is delicious, especially all the local food that I dearly regret has not made its way to Canada yet.

Our work at GAP so far has been both exciting and very enjoyable. Laura and I are putting together a policy brief analyzing the presence of international organizations within Kosovo. This seems simple enough, but we soon realized that transparency might not be the organizations’ strong suits. For the past two weeks, we’ve been conducting interviews with officials from the three organizations currently operating within Kosovo: UNMIK, EULEX, and the ICO. The goal is that at the end of the project, the policy brief will form the foundation for a conference that we will have the opportunity to organize.

In addition, Laura and I will were given the chance to lead a workshop on a topic of our choice. Taking into consideration current events and issues here in Kosovo, as well as our personal backgrounds, our initial idea is to plan a workshop on the topic of freedom of expression.


Yet probably the most enlightening experience I’ve had thus far has been our trip to Serbia last weekend. While slightly apprehensive about what it would be like for us coming from Kosovo, my concerns were entirely unfounded and it was great to see our fellow ILPers in Belgrade. What made the trip so interesting, however, was the fact that it really gave me more of an understanding of Kosovo-Serb relations, and more specifically why the current legal and political situation here is so complex. Kosovo's declaration of independence last year is taken as a matter of course by 60 states, but nationalistic fervour in Serbia remains. I hope that seeing the other side of the coin, as it were, will make the work that I’m doing in Kosovo more effective, as well as more sensitive to the complicated relations that exist between Balkan countries.

Well, that’s it for now. I hope everyone is doing well in their placements and having a wonderful time. All the best!