Back Citizens of North Macedonia informed on Free Legal Aid services and expanding its use

Citizens of North Macedonia informed on Free Legal Aid services and expanding its use

Free legal aid is the provision of free legal services for those poor and marginalized people who cannot afford it. The new Law on Free Legal Aid (LFLA) that started its implementation on 1 October 2019 changed the concept of the legal aid system in North Macedonia in general. The LFLA takes more liberal approach, broader scope and it ensures access to legal aid in all legal issues with exemption of those explicitly excluded. Given the extent of the novelties introduced, an awareness raising campaign was needed to enhance free legal aid (FLA) literacy of both legal professionals and potential beneficiaries, to support broader accessibility and increase the number of submitted FLA applications, with a special focus on women, children, and vulnerable groups.

Today we mark one year since the kick-off of the awareness raising campaign on FLA in North Macedonia launched on the occasion of the European Day of Justice, an initiative of the action on "Supporting enhanced access to higher quality Free Legal Aid services in North Macedonia" part of the European Union and the Council of Europe joint Horizontal Facility II programme. It has reached more than 300 000 people informing them about the importance, availability and functioning of the FLA system.

This has been reflected in the increased number of FLA requests submitted and approved in 2020: 299 people received primary legal aid in the Ministry of Justice Regional Offices in 2019 compared to 663 in 2020, recognizing an increase of 121% while the total number of approved requests for secondary legal aid in comparison to 2019 has increased by 46%.

The ongoing awareness raising campaign aims at changing the social perception of FLA as an important, available, and functional mechanism for legal protection of vulnerable groups of citizens and as the State’s obligation to ensure equal access to legal aid for those citizens who cannot afford it. The campaign enhanced the FLA awareness among both legal professionals and potential beneficiaries to support broader accessibility, with a special focus on women, children, and vulnerable groups.

During one-year, different promotional activities, aimed to raise the public awareness, have been supported under the Free Legal Aid action in North Macedonia. In particular, important promotional materials were produced for informing various audiences, such as factsheets, leaflets, posters, in Macedonian, Albanian, Turkish and Romani language distributed to more than 230 relevant institutions/organisations, aiming to reach as many people as possible, especially vulnerable groups with particular focus on victims of domestic violence, children, Roma and other minorities.

To support this process, new FLA Facebook Page was created while the new FLA website: http://www.pravnapomos.mk   which started to function as a resource platform for finding important and updated information on Free Legal Aid services in North Macedonia, was developed in support of the Ministry of Justice.

To inform key audiences on the FLA services, ads were published in key media portals, as well as in daily newspapers and above 30 media articles about FLA were published in national and local media portals. Interviews with the Minister of Justice and with the Head of the Directorate for Human Right of the CoE about FLA were also widely viewed in two daily national media.

During this information campaign, the Law on Free Legal Aid and the procedure for application for Free Legal Aid have been also promoted on various morning programmes on the three most popular national televisions in North Macedonia (MTV 1, Sitel TV and Kanal 5). Furthermore, an animation video for FLA was prepared and published on the FLA website, FLA Facebook page “Бесплатна Правна Помош”, shared on the social media of the Minister of Justice and Deputy Minister of Justice and broadcasted on national TV stations in Macedonian and Albanian language (MTV 1 and MTV 2) as well as on 15 local TV stations with more than 360 airings.

As a result of this awareness raising initiative, the citizens’ interest for FLA has been extended, namely, an increased in-flow of questions by the citizens to the legal aid providers have been noticed. The number of the citizens hearing about and using the FLA services is expected to further increase in the future as the information campaign started last year on the occasion of the International Justice Day, will continue its implementation.


 

 

North Macedonia 25 October 2021
  • Diminuer la taille du texte
  • Augmenter la taille du texte
  • Imprimer la page