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Macedonia: Regional Workshop 10-11 March, 2008 |
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Four panel discussions and four workshops took place within the regional workshop.
Panel discussions elaborated the impact of minorities in government decision-making, decentralisation processes and political participation of minorities at local level, EU conditionality and the political participation of minorities, as well as political parties and minority issues.
Workshops focused on the ways of conducting political dialogue at national level in practice; on the impact of NGOs on enhancing minorities’ political participation; on how to create and manage successful election campaigns; and on EU progress reports regarding minority issues.
Specific goals for the workshop were set up beforehand.
The first one was to familiarize countries in the region with the situation regarding political participation of minorities in the countries involved. In order to meet this goal each country had its presentation on the topics and was included in the discussion after each panel session.
The second goal was to recognise best practices for minorities’ political participation. In this regard experiences from the countries were presented and elaborated in various occasions. Besides panel discussions, during the workshops participants communicated more frequently and had a chance to compare different solutions in the region regarding political participation of minorities.
The third goal aimed to deepen understanding and cooperation between the countries involved regarding the protection of minority rights and political participation. At this occasion, it is our pleasure to inform that a formal network of NGOs from the region working on the field of human and minority rights has been established. That is a concrete way to strengthen the cooperation between countries for improving the situation with minorities and human rights in general. The network includes all partners from the DIANET project: Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania and Kosovo (under UNSCR 1244).
General conclusion of the whole 2-day workshop:
It presents the invincible fact that the countries from the region, besides many differences in attitudes, are capable to seat on one place and reasonably discuss on what is important to all of them. As the President of Common Values stated in his closing remarks “Let this workshop be a message to the European Union countries showing that the countries from the Western Balkans, supported by their friends Romania and Bulgaria, have capacities for an EU Membership and that minority rights promotion, dialogue and cooperation are priorities high on the agenda for fulfilling the political membership criteria”.
It has to be underlined that none of this would have happened without the organizational, logistical and financial support of the King Baudouin Foundation which was included in the very beginning of the workshop preparation.
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