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USAID/OTI Macedonia Field Report

June 2002

Program Description

The Macedonia Confidence Building Initiative (CBI) seeks to mitigate conflict by increasing citizen participation in decision-making, fostering effective and responsible local government and supporting diverse civil society organizations. Working with local non-governmental organizations, informal groups of citizens, media outlets and local government authorities, CBI brings together diverse groups of people to identify and meet common needs. The program is implemented by the International Organization for Migration, which manages CBI offices in Skopje, Tetovo, Kicevo, Bitola and Kocani. Since October 2001, CBI has provided $3,477,723 in small grants.

COUNTRY SITUATION

PARLIAMENT PASSES PACKAGE OF LAWS OUTLINED IN OHRID AGREEMENT - The Macedonian Parliament on June 19 passed a package of 15 more laws required in the Ohrid Framework Agreement ending the civil conflict last year. Laws included those making Albanian one of the official languages of the Macedonian republic, allowing the use of Albanian in the November census, and creating six electoral districts for the country. The passage was the result of extensive negotiations among the Framework Agreement parties. Only a few laws stipulated in the agreement remain to be passed, including those on passports and the rules of Parliament.

DUAL PASSPORT ISSUE RAISES TENSIONS - A bill related to the Framework Agreement calling for the creation of passports in the Albanian and Macedonian languages created controversy after a bill to create two separate passports was rejected by President Boris Trajkovski and the opposition SDSM.

CREATION OF ETHNIC ALBANIAN PARTY BY FORMER NLA COMMANDER - Ali Ahmeti, former commander of the NLA, founded a new political party on June 4 in the ethnic-Albanian-dominated town of Tetovo, in northwestern Macedonia. The founding event, covered heavily in the national media, stirred controversy. The party, named the Union for Democratic Integration (UDI), stated that its goal was implementation of the Framework Agreement, multiethnic cooperation, and the Euro-Atlantic integration of the Republic of Macedonia. Two PDP deputies in the Macedonian Parliament joined the party, giving it immediate Parliamentary representation.

CBI HIGHLIGHTS

A. Narrative Summary

CBI's efforts at building community networks during the last nine months is now paying off, with a surge of activity taking place throughout Macedonia in June. CBI approved 38 grants totaling $851,278 during the month, bringing the total number of grants approved to 193 and total funds committed to $3,477,723. These numbers are the highest monthly figures to date. The average grant size was $22,402, up from $17,664 in May.

The following projects exemplify CBI's progress working with communities in an overall effort to build peace at the local level:

Near Kicevo, in western Macedonia, CBI is helping the council of the isolated village of Cer build a new reservoir with a grant that aims to encourage effective and accountable local governance. The project was developed by a diverse group of Cer residents and will provide all materials necessary to replace an old, unusable reservoir. The new reservoir will be connected to the delivery system taking water directly into people's homes, thus saving the village residents from retrieving water by hand, greatly improving the village sanitation and quality of life. The grant is one of 20 infrastructure-related grants approved by CBI during the month.

In Tetovo, CBI is sponsoring two six-day multi-ethnic summer camps in an effort to provide positive interactions between the youth in an area at the center of last year's conflict. Ethnic Albanian, Macedonian, Turkish, and Roma youth from the greater Tetovo area in northwestern Macedonia are expected to participate in the camps, which will engage youth in a range of peace-building activities. Programs will include conflict resolution training, as well as sports, art and ecology activities. The camp will take place at Lake Struga, a peaceful and historic setting in southwest Macedonia. The project is one of six summer camps or youth festivals that CBI approved in June.

The Beloviste Reconciliation Cup gave many western Macedonians their first contact with villagers across ethnic lines since the conflict.

CBI's media office has approved a grant to cover the design, printing and distribution of a book, "Ohrid and Beyond," to provide the public with balanced information on the events and players involved in the Ohrid Agreement. The book will be a compilation of material produced by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in a previous grant, and will be distributed to municipalities, journalists, libraries, schools and universities, and other institutions nationwide. The book will be launched on August 13, the one-year anniversary of the signing of the Ohrid agreement. It was one of seven media grants approved by CBI in June.

In the southern Macedonia town of Resen, CBI will support the efforts of local government and citizens in transforming an old cinema into a multipurpose community center. CBI will co-finance the rehabilitation of the building with USAID's Community Self Help Initiative program. The community center will house a library, offices for neighborhood community groups, a theater, and recreation space. The municipality of Resen identified the initiative as their highest priority in this first project with CBI and will contribute to the project with unskilled labor, landscaping, and maintenance. The rehabilitation is one of four projects approved in June to rehabilitate community centers.

In the northern town of Slupcane, in the Kocani area of operation, CBI has approved a grant for the rehabilitation of a local park in an effort to demonstrate the power of community participation in post-conflict recovery. The mood in the ethnically Albanian-dominated Slupcane remains tense after much of the village was destroyed in last year's conflict. An estimated 85 percent of the town's residents were either displaced or forced to live underground during that time and the grant is specifically aimed at empowering the local groups that are working hardest to bring about positive change and reduce tensions in the area. The $10,000 grant is one of seven approved in June that aim to improve parks or sports fields around the country.

B. 2002 Grants Activity Summary

* All approved and completed grants since program began 10/12/01.

C. Indicators of Success

The Macedonian media seemed to catch on to the confidence-building story in June, with scores of stories on CBI community-driven projects appearing in the national and local media. Articles acclaimed several projects in particular, including a sold-out music and dance performance in Skopje with popular performers from all ethnic groups, a city clean-up project in Bitola, and a nation-wide student competition of art and poetry. The press praised the projects' dual roles in community improvement and bolstering relationships between diverse groups of citizens and local governments. The vast majority of CBI-supported initiatives receive at least local media coverage, amplifying their impact and contributing to confidence building.

Tuna, who raps in Albanian, was one of many popular performers at a sold-out music and dance event in Skopje.

A recent survey showed that CBI's efforts to increase the amount of credible news available to citizens has already had an impact in conflict-affected areas of the country. A media initiative completed in June encouraged collaborative reporting between two of the country's leading Albanian and Macedonian newspapers and expanded their distribution to under-served conflict areas around Skopje, Kumanovo and Tetovo. According to the results of the survey conducted before and after the pilot project, the 12-week initiative increased confidence in the media by 50% in the targeted areas and tripled newspaper readership.

The Bitola "Women in Politics Campaign," meanwhile, which supports a coalition of ten ethnic Macedonian, Albanian and other local associations in the region, has also proven popular. Tied to a local media campaign to increase women's participation in the election and in politics in general, the success of the project has encouraged the groups involved to expand the project northward toward Kicevo to cover most of southwest Macedonia. This unique initiative is expected to gain more attention as Macedonia's Parliamentary elections near. Participants have noted repeatedly that if it were not for CBI's organization, the groups would never have met.

In Tetovo, CBI hosted a soccer tournament on June 9 to foster a spirit of interethnic coexistence in northern Macedonia. The Beloviste Reconciliation Football Cup included teams from three ethnic Albanian and four Macedonian villages, bringing together these people for the first time since the conflict last year. Teams representing the Macedonian police, the border patrol, customs officers and the OSCE also participated. The event was coordinated by CBI, the village council of Beloviste, the Mayor of Vratnica, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

In Skopje, CBI helped a local citizen's group tap into the deep desire for peace among young people across Macedonia with a nation-wide art and poetry contest on the subject of peace. The National Competition for Peace held its awards ceremony on June 22 in Skopje, giving out awards to the winning students at an event that attracted hundreds of guests from around the country. The competition garnered over 2,000 works of art and 1,000 poems from young people of all ethnic groups. A book including reproductions of the award-winning artwork will be released in September.

In early June CBI hosted a field visit from several OTI-Washington staff, including OTI Deputy Director, Greg Gottlieb, Europe and Eurasia Team Leader, Robert Jenkins, and Macedonia Program Manager, Eleanor Bedford. The group visited CBI projects in Bitola, Ohrid, Kicevo and Tetovo, providing program staff with the opportunity to demonstrate CBI's approach to community-driven conflict mitigation work. Program staff members were pleased to discuss strategy and operations with the Washington team.

D. Program Appraisal

The blossoming of CBI project activity and positive media attention in June seem a clear indication that CBI's hard work nurturing community contacts and honing its community-driven grants process is now coming to fruition. CBI's strategy is now shifting into a second phase of operation aiming to compound the effects of its work by creating linkages between projects and increased leveraging from communities to get more out of every dollar committed. CBI staff met to discuss program strategy and identified immediate priorities tailored to the unique political context prevailing in Macedonia.

Next Steps/Immediate Priorities

CBI Program Officers will begin shifting emphasis to a strategy that seeks to leverage the program's successes to obtain maximum impact across the country. CBI staff are consistently told they are one of the few foreign-funded programs in Macedonia that delivers on its promises quickly and with serious commitment to a community driven process. With more communities having heard about the program's approach and success, more communities are coming forward having already done much of the difficult work of ironing out local interests. With this in mind, CBI hopes to put greater pressure on community partners to be even more inclusive and to increase their own in-kind or financial contributions. The program also wishes to use its reputation to leverage more foreign and national funding available for projects in the ultimate interest of helping Macedonia make a decisive shift toward an era of peace and prosperity.

The next several months offer CBI unique confidence building opportunities: Parliamentary elections are due in September; summer and early fall weather provide the best window for projects involving construction; and the summer school holidays provide excellent opportunities to support youth reconciliation initiatives.

With regards to elections, CBI hopes to focus on activities that promote non-violent participation in elections while pursuing its core mission of mitigating conflict within communities. CBI plans to spend up to $250,000 on election-related media projects, with an increasing emphasis on radio projects as listenership increases in the summer months. CBI recognizes that the election presents significant challenges with the potential for an increase in tensions and violence. It also recognizes that the election process, because it allows citizens to vote only for parties and not individuals, gives local officials few opportunities to respond to specific voter concerns at the local level. To address these concerns CBI sub-offices will take a flexible approach that focuses on grants that leverage commitment from diverse non-political coalitions and already-existing groups of activists. CBI will also cooperate with other international and national NGOs in these efforts. Specific projects will likely include local initiatives aimed at increasing the dissemination of balanced and accurate information.