Article by: Dr. Borjan Pavlovski
The Association for Emancipation, Solidarity and Equality of Women (ESE) was founded as a civil society organisation in 1995 in Macedonia. Since the beginning, ESE has developed and helped women‟s leadership in the development and implementation of women‟s human rights and social justice in our society. Over the last 15 years, ESE has been guided by its dedication for seeking solutions to problems. By promoting human rights, it improves social and economic justice, considering these as an indivisible set of standards to be enjoyed by all people.
The main target population groups towards which ESE has focused its work are women in Macedonia and the Roma ethnic minority. Since the beginning, ESE has identified and maintained its work on issues of women‟s health; protection and prevention of domestic violence as it is one of the prevailing forms of violence against women; and participation of women in decision making bodies. Later on, ESE used the practice of continuous assessments and monitoring of women‟s human rights in all societal spheres. So far, ESE has prepared and contributed to five reporting processes on UN human rights treaties including shadow reports to four major human rights treaties.
ESE has also continuously worked on improvement of the health status and access to health care services for women and Roma minority. The work on improvement of women‟s health is mainly focused on advancement of health rights concerning reproductive and sexual health issues and the health of the women in the period of menopause. Since 2010, ESE has been implementing the project: “Human rights in patients care” that aims at raising the level of awareness among general public (patients); legal and health professionals on the importance of respecting and implementing health rights.
The work of improvement of Roma health is mainly focused on obtaining the right to health and access to health care services for
the Roma – starting from the access to health insurance, access to reproductive health care services, immunisation coverage of Roma
children and access to preventive health care services aimed for Roma women and children. In the last three years, ESE has
expanded its work with Roma through provision of paralegal services in the Roma communities on protection of the health rights. At the moment ESE and its Roma partners are implementing the second grant on provision of this type of assistance.
In its overall work, ESE has used different approaches, methods and techniques such as direct services for those in need, conducting different types of researches and analysis for determining the actual conditions, policy reviews, implementation of advocacy strategies for improvement of the situation. ESE has also engaged with governmental institutions, political parties and members of the Parliament.
ESE has so far focused on building partnerships with various stakeholders. At the national level, ESE cooperates with other CSOs on different matters of common interest, especially with CSOs that work in the areas of gender, health and Roma issues. Apart from CSOs, ESE also cooperates with professional associations that enable involvement of the broad professional community in its operation. ESE cooperates with all relevant governmental institutions. ESE also cooperates with the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia through participation in the operation of different commissions. At the local level, ESE cooperates with the municipalities in all regions of the country.
Since 2009, ESE started to integrate budget monitoring and advocacy based on it, in the field of improvement of the right to health for
Roma minority (specifically for improved immunisation coverage of Roma children). Due to the experienced advantages of these
approaches, which were lacking in the previous work of ESE, in 2010, ESE decided to integrate budget monitoring and advocacy in its strategic work i.e. the entire scope of work of ESE. Thus, since 2011, ESE started to implement the programme for capacity building of ESE staff regarding the applied budget work supported by Open Society Foundation (OSF). In mid- 2011, the activities for community monitoring work were added to the pre-existing applied budget work regarding monitoring of the activities aimed for immunisation of Roma children in Macedonia.
Considering the lack of transparency and accountability of the government, ESE now plans to focus on improved transparency and accountability of the government using the approaches of budget monitoring and community monitoring.
This article is taken from the 3rd edition of COPASAH Communique, the newsletter of COPASAH. To read the full newsletter CLICK HERE