The freezing of programs by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) by the American administration has had a significant impact on the six countries of the Western Balkans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was stated during the panel \u201cPolitical Accountability and New Technologies,\u201d held as part of the regional POINT 13 conference in Sarajevo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Toshe Zafirov from the Balkan Civil Society Development Network said that civil society in the region has seen several negative trends in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to him, the freezing of funds by the U.S. in the Western Balkans has also affected NGOs, with the biggest impact seen in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Albania. Regarding Kosovo, he noted that there is no precise data available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor some time now, the Balkan civil society network has been monitoring civil society and we’ve noticed several negative trends in the past and in recent years. One of them was what happened at the beginning of 2025 \u2013 the freezing of programs by the U.S. in the Western Balkans. The most affected countries [by this decision] were Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Albania. We have data particularly focused on Serbia. According to data published by USAID, the amount cut \u2013 especially in Serbia \u2013 exceeded 53 million dollars… North Macedonia was not as heavily affected, but there are still many important programs for the country, such as the fight against corruption, which has also been frozen. If there are colleagues here from North Macedonia, correct me, but I believe that more than 4 million euros were cut, while the least affected country was Eastern Montenegro due to the fact that USAID\u2019s program is not developed there; it is a bilateral cooperation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The importance of USAID funding for the Western Balkans was also emphasized by Igor Bla\u017eevi\u0107 from the Center for Civil Society in Prague. However, he said the current geopolitical reality is not only about civil society but also about democracy and peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is not just about civil society \u2013 it\u2019s about democracy, it\u2019s about Europe, it\u2019s about peace. If you want to talk about world order, we\u2019re no longer in an order \u2013 we\u2019re in complete disorder. So, it goes much deeper than just civil society. Also, it\u2019s not just about USAID. In a way, we\u2019ll talk about it and we\u2019re all concerned, but it\u2019s not what really matters. USAID is a wake-up call for all of us \u2013 I studied philosophy \u2013 from the dogmatic sleep that we, as civil society, have been in for quite some time now, following a lack of activity, after the theories of change of the 90s… First of all, as mentioned, the geopolitical landscape is completely different. Today, autocrats support other autocrats. Democracy no longer offers support. International institutions no longer function \u2013 they claim to serve the public interest, but they don\u2019t,\u201d <\/em>he emphasized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Upon taking office in January 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump shut down the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), eliminating the vast majority of the agency\u2019s programs, while the remaining ones will be transferred under the authority of the State Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 KosovaPress<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The freezing of programs by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) by the American administration has had a significant impact on the six countries of the Western Balkans. This was stated during the panel \u201cPolitical Accountability and New Technologies,\u201d held as part of the regional POINT 13 conference in Sarajevo. Toshe Zafirov from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":74581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[301,296],"tags":[2285,6164,6161,6162,6163,1211],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74579"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74579"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74580,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74579\/revisions\/74580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosovapress.com\/eng\/admin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}