In the process of enhancing the accessibility and awareness of free legal aid in North Macedonia, the EU and CoE Horizontal Facility action “Supporting enhanced access to higher quality Free Legal Aid services in North Macedonia” is continuing to assist the Ministry of Justice and related legal practitioners in the field, to ensure bettter free legal aid services for the people of North Macedonia. In this framework a gender capacity assessment has been conducted among the employees and staff of the Ministry of Justice-Regional Offices, attorneys-at-law in the field as well as, NGOs and law clinics who provide free legal aid services. The assessment was conducted through online questionnaires and provides a thorough analysis of the legal and policy framework for gender equality while giving valuable information on the free legal aid system and stakeholders in North Macedonia. For the first time this assessment will provide the basis for a comprehensive gender analysis of the Macedonian Free Legal Aid system and the development of a gender mainstreaming strategy which will offer concrete and realistic recommendations for a more effective gender mainstreaming in the field of free legal aid services. The analysis has been translated into Macedonian and shared with the Ministry of Justice and the Bar association.
Furthermore, thanks to the support of the action, the Ministry of Justice will increase and improve its efforts in the field of public communication by updating the Communication Strategy on the Free Legal Aid Law and supporting the implementation of the awareness raising campaign for the promotion of the right to FLA among the general population. The communication strategy creates a comprehensive, strategic, and executional action plan that will support the implementation of Free Legal Aid interventions and it will be a solid ground for the future efforts in raising awareness of the citizens to access free legal aid services.
As the action has entered in its second year of implementation a Baseline Assessment and a Monitoring and Evaluation Plan, has taken place to allow a proper assessment of the Action’s impact and results. The assessment which provides a Monitoring and Evaluation Mechanism presents the context of the situation on the ground and provides indicators, baseline values and methodology for data collection to facilitate the monitoring of the progress in achieving Actions’ results.
The Action on “Supporting enhanced access to higher quality Free Legal Aid services in North Macedonia” is part of the “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey II”, a joint EU/CoE programme implemented by the Council of Europe.