Македонски центар за меѓународна соработка - МЦМС

The Ohrid Framework Agreement (OFA) is a topic that increasingly receives more attention from different political parties in Macedonia. Different statements of political representatives appeared lately, plotting new agreement on one hand and praising it as a well-designed framework, which only requires more efforts to be fully implemented on the other.

This is one of the benchmarks that the Republic of Macedonia should meet in order to start the negotiations for EU membership. In this context, the project aims to provide full analysis of the agreement, which would contribute for improving the dialogue among the political representatives and the civil sector regarding the importance of full implementation of all segments of OFA. The analysis should also point out the recent drawbacks and to propose measures for overcoming them.

The overall objective of the project is to contribute for more efficient implementation of OFA on local and central level. Specific objective of the project is to enhance the dialogue between central and local authorities, political parties and civil society organizations, on the basis of the analysis on implementation of OFA in all segments.

Primary target group is the central and local authorities and representatives of the civil society organizations. Secondary target group is the general public, media and other actors. Direct beneficiaries of the project are representatives of the Secretariat for Implementation of the Ohrid Framework Agreement (SIOFA); National Committee on Relations among Communities; members of the municipal councils, local committees on relations among the communities; political parties and local and national civil society organizations active in this field and international actors.

The project results will be: assessment of the implementation of OFA from normative analysis to practical application, thus ensuring dialogue between different political representatives and civil sector regarding the difficulties and obstacles during the implementation and will also propose measures for overcoming them. In addition, the project should strengthen the capacities of institutions focused on OFA implementation.

In order to achieve these objectives and results, the following activities will be realized: regular sessions between the partners, five consultation meetings with SIOFA representatives, three meetings with representatives of municipal councils, established methodology for implementing the survey, monitoring of 20 sessions of the municipal councils in Gostivar, Struga and Debar, developed analysis printed in 500 copies in Macedonian, Albanian and English, three workshops in the selected municipalities, 3 training sessions on intercultural dialogue in selected municipalities, 3 meetings of the parliamentary lobby group, 2 training sessions for the parliamentary lobby group and national conference. Detailed table with the timeframe for implementation of project activities is provided in the application.
The implementation period is January 1 – December 31, 2010.

The assumptions affecting the realization of project objectives are: readiness of local and central authorities, political parties and civil society organizations to participate in all stages of the project; civil society organizations active in this field are interested for establishing a network through which they could address the problems of non-majority communities; strategy for cooperation between SIOFA and the civil sector will be created soon and the fundamental human rights are provided.

The activities will be realized in coordination with the participating civil society organizations, primarily with ADI. MCIC, in consultation with the participating organization, will be responsible for the decision making and project implementation. The project is very complex and it involves heterogeneous beneficiaries, i.e. representatives of all sectors in the society.

The total costs of the project (excluding the operational and indirect costs of MCIC) amount to MKD 3,594,685, whereas MCIC participates with MKD 3,164,625, while the contribution of ADI is MKD 430,060.