CIVIC CHARTER Enabling environment-A principle that is not respected

Human rights and freedoms as standards have to be respected and encompassed in all spheres of everyday human life in the country, which should promote and guarantee them as its basic obligation towards the citizens. The state is obliged to provide instruments and mechanisms for their protection, especially where they are most sensitive and most subjected to violation.

The Civic Charter as a global framework for the promotion of human rights and freedoms reflects the universally accepted human rights, freedoms and principles, among which also the enabling environment principle. According to this principle, every government adopts legal, administrative and other measures for the respect, protection, promotion and fulfilling of the rights stated in the Charter and investigates attacks on individuals and organizations with the purpose of having suspected perpetrators held responsible in accordance with international standards of fairness. The numerous situations and attempts to hinder CIVIL’s activities on the ground speak that this principle is not respected in Macedonia.

Accordingly, in 2016 the then Mayor of the Municipality of Kratovo negatively responded to CIVIL’s request for setting up an info-stand in the center of Kratovo, with the explanation that half of the public area is occupied with summer terraces, while the remaining part is in the function of citizens being able to move around freely. In other words, to put it more simple, in Kratovo there is no place for CIVIL. In 2015, on the other hand, the mayor of Bitola, Vlado Talevski, forbade CIVIL of holding an event within the framework of the Initiative “Social justice now!”, that was accordingly announced in the public, as well as in the Bitola police. Talevski’s explanation could not have been cheaper. Supposedly, the space was occupied by Bitfest, which starts on June 25. CIVIL’s team visited the two locations for which it requested permission to hold the even within the Initiative “Social justice now!”.

In 2013, the then minister of Education, Spiro Ristevski, forbade creative workshops to be held in schools around the country for education of children and youth as part of a project of CIVIL.

These examples are just a small part of the obstacles that CIVIL has been facing every day for years and are a violation to one of the principles of the Civic Charter, which CIVIL continues intensively to promote in the public.