INPRIS is a legal think tank

Needs analysis visit in Macedonia

5 May 2015. The international project “NGOs and the Judiciary – watch dog activities, interactions, collaboration, communication” aims at exchanging experiences between Visegrad and Western Balkans countries in area of cooperation of NGOs and the judiciary. One of the stages of the project is needs analysis visit that is an initial step of preparations for study visit, which will be held in Poland in October. Macedonia (and our partner organization Coalition All for Fair Trials) was the first place we visited. The visit was extremely interesting not only because our partner is a really active and engaged organization, but situation in the country is “intense” (protests against the government, problems on the border with Kosovo) – the visit gave us better insight in ongoing processes.

The judiciary in Macedonia is still plagued by allegations of selective justice, indirect political pressure, and unusually expedited lawsuits. The influence of the executive branch over legal proceedings was criticized in numerous high-profile cases during last years. On the other hand, local NGOs are really active in order to support and strengthen rule of law, also with an assistance of international organizations.  

During our time in Skopje we had a chance to identify needs and expectation of partner organization, but not only – we had interesting meetings with representatives of other NGOs: Institute for Human Rights, Macedonian Young Lawyers Association and Helsinki Committee for Human Rights. Moreover, we had a great honour to have a discussion with Mrs. Margarita Caca Nikolovska (former judge of the European Court of Human Rights) and judge Biljana Kocevska from Primary Court Skopje 1. We were also invited to USAID and had a meeting with a team in charge of Judicial Strengthening Project.

The overall aim of the project is to gather and share good practices in area of cooperation between NGOs and judiciary, especially civic monitoring of judiciary, with focus on Western Balkans countries. We observe that NGOs are getting more and more involved in various activities related to judiciary (also cooperation projects) and many of these activities are various forms of monitoring. We find it extremely inspiring and useful to discover how this issue is addressed in other countries.  The project can be divided into three phases – research, study visit in Poland combined with a meeting of all partners and workshops in Western Balkans. 

The project is funded by International Visegrad Fund and Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea