“CIVIL and Balkan Forum are both members of the civil forum. It’s a diverse platform of organizations. We have united our efforts to give an example, to show that we can work together and create a united front to tackle the issues that are holding back democracies, progress, and future of our countries.  We have presented joint statements and manifestos in numerous summits. We are working to strengthen relationships between civil society, media, youth, academia diaspora, and business sectors in the Balkan region I will emphasize a couple of critical issues we are dealing with, said Astrit Istrefi from The Balkan Forum at Conference:“Attacks on democracy and human rights: Civil society organizations in support of Western Balkans societies facing disinformation, hate speech and hybrid attacks”.

Istrefi said that we are witnessing different forms of warfare.

“Extremely sophisticated, but not unnoticed, or undetected, that are threatening our countries and societies, that have a severe impact on our democracy and disturbing peace and progress in our countries and regions. Propaganda, disinformation, fake news, however we name or define them, are proven to be influential in not only disseminating, but also almost having a deciding impact in elections, referendums, peace and EU integration processes, including in the current pandemic and vaccination. There is plenty of evidence of such threat to our countries and societies. We are focusing how we can become more vigilant to counter such threats. We can learn a lot from each other, we can learn from other examples. We can work on them and build on successes we are witnessing.” said Astrit Istrefi, Wednesday (7.28.2021), Skopje.