Morning After: Life without Supervision, an in-depth study of Kosovo’s compliance with the terms of the Ahtisaari plan published by Forum 2015 (and managed by Group for Legal and Political Studies), was awarded the PASOS Think-Tank Publication of the Year Award 2012 today. This is the first time the first prize was awarded to a think-tank organization from Kosovo. 

The award was announced at “Open Government, Deeper Democracy,” an international think-tanks’ and policymakers’ conference organized by the Center for Research and Policy Making (CRPM) and the Policy Association for an Open Society (PASOS).

The report analyzes the benchmarks set by the International Civilian Office (ICO) and the progress made toward them since Kosovo declared supervised independence in February 2008. The report finds that there are still a number of incomplete benchmarks and difficult issues left to be resolved by Kosovo institutions alone, although these were part of the ICO mandate.

“It is a publication that will serve as a useful reference for those active in Kosovo and the authors deserve credit for being thorough and covering so much ground, and making recommendations at the end of each section,” said award juror Bohdan Krawchenko, director general of the University of Central Asia.

“The Kosovo study is an excellent paper on what has and what has not been achieved during the period of constrained independence,” added juror Kálmán Mizsei, a co-chairman of the Roma Policy Board at the Open Society Institute and chairman of the Making the Most of EU Funds for the Roma. “It is also a sober analysis of what can be expected.”

Krawchenko and Mizsei were joined on the jury by Gabriel Svárovská, a member of the board of the European Partnership for Democracy and former director of the Human Rights & Transition Policy Department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic.

The jury also recognized the work of the Expert-Grup in Moldova, which was awarded Second Place in the competition for Strategic Comparison of Moldova’s Integration Options.