Inside PRM Light: Ten Days of Foresight in Bosnia

Inside PRM Light: Ten Days of Foresight in Bosnia

When political stagnation and civic space restrictions escalated in Bosnia and Herzegovina in early 2025, IREGS World deployed its Power & Risk Mapping (PRM) Light tool under a simulation. The goal was simple but urgent: deliver a credible risk picture in just ten business days.

What We Found

The assessment highlighted a risk environment shaped by:

  • Political deadlock fueled by Republika Srpska obstructionism and external alignment with Hungary and Russia.
  • Shrinking civic space, with the new “foreign agent” law stigmatizing NGOs and media.
  • Entrenched corruption, including procurement capture, phantom NGOs, and state-owned enterprise advertising.
  • Localized unrest, driven by hate speech and politicized protests.

These risks were not buried in lengthy reports. Instead, PRM Light distilled them into a decision-ready dashboard: a heatmap across six categories, scenario notes for best-case and worst-case futures, and targeted recommendations for donors and partners.

Why It Mattered

One donor official who reviewed the Bosnia output described it this way:

“The first risk product I could actually act on without a 40-page read. We knew where to watch, and what to do next.”

PRM Light showed that Bosnia’s baseline trajectory was chronic stagnation: institutional paralysis, incremental civic space restrictions, and donor exposure to reputational risks. But it also highlighted immediate safeguards donors could adopt, from pooled legal defense funds for NGOs to tighter procurement transparency covenants.

From Compliance to Foresight

Too often, risk frameworks focus on compliance paperwork rather than the realities of power and coercion. PRM Light flips that logic. By triangulating desk reviews, media scans, and key informant insights, it produces foresight, not just compliance reassurance.

In Bosnia, this meant early warning indicators donors could monitor, legislative calendars, hate-speech spikes, fiscal disbursements, and sanctions evasions, to anticipate constraints before they hardened into crises.

Looking Ahead

PRM Light is designed for fragile contexts where slow, static assessments fall short. Its value lies in speed, clarity, and actionability. For Bosnia, it offered a way to safeguard civic space, protect donor credibility, and adapt programming in a volatile environment.

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At IREGS World, this spotlight illustrates our mission in practice: turning risks into foresight, and foresight into action.