Human Rights and Poverty Reduction in Macedonia

The project “Human Rights and Poverty Reduction in Macedonia” was aimed at piloting the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights’ “Principles and Guidelines for a Human Rights Approach to Poverty Reduction Strategies“. Using a bottom-up approach, project activities on local level fed into the work on national level.

On the local level, capacities of the local governments and important actors were strengthened in order to include the vulnerable and poor in the elaboration of local development strategies. To this end, project activities included performing a baseline study on poverty in the seven selected pilot municipalities, elaborating a set of tools for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the organisation of trainings and workshops on the elaborated tools, the organisation of Peer Discussion Groups with the representatives of the most marginalised social groups, as well as funding micro-projects to ensure the implementation of the Human Rights Based Approach in the elaboration of local development plans. In the project’s final year the local development plans in two remaining pilot municipalities were finalised and printed, and in all municipalities the micro-projects were successfully concluded.

On the central level, the LBI-GMR has successfully facilitated technical assistance for the first phase of the elaboration of the Joint Inclusion Memorandum (JIM). This strategic document referring to the main challenges and political measures related to poverty and social exclusion has to be elaborated by the Macedonian government (through the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy) within the EU accession process. The LBI-GMR closely cooperated with the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy and ensured the participation of over a hundred civil society organizations into consultations on the content of this document. Within the EU accession processes, this was the first time mechanisms and indicators for human rights relevant poverty reduction and enhanced social inclusion have been developed in a participatory manner. As the result of this process, the publication “On the Path to EU: A Contribution of  the Civil Society Sector in the Creation of the Policy of Social Inclusion in the Republic of Macedonia“ was presented in October 2008.