Macedonia

The report Problem of Child Abuse: Attitudes and Experiences in Seven Countries of Central and Eastern Europe presents selected findings from a comparative research programme carried out in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Ukraine in 2009 and compares it with results from an analogous research from 2005 within the Childhood without Abuse - Toward a Better Child Protection System in Eastern Europe project. The project, coordinated by the Nobody's Children Foundation and financed by the OAK Foundation, was carried out in 2005 - 2009.

The First Children's Embassy in the World "Megjashi" organized National Children's Conference for Child Participation on the 16th March 2010. The conference was a part of the project „Building a Culture of Child Participation", financed by the European Union and UNICEF.
The project started in December 2008 and included preparation of four alternative reports about the situation regarding the rights of the child in the Republic of Macedonia, out of which three were prepared by the National Coalition for children's rights and one was prepared by the children themselves.

The report presents the findings of an institutional assessment of the responsiveness of the child protection system in the Republic of Macedonia to violence against children. The study specifically looked for formal mechanisms that govern the referral of cases of violence to the appropriate institutions, as well as those that promote cooperation and coordination among component actors in the child protection system.
It has been prepared by Verica Stamenkova-Trajkova, PhD, fromInstitute for Social Work and Social Policy
Faculty of Philosophy-Skopje.

The First Children's Embassy in the World Megjashi is conducting a campaign under the slogan "You should not be silent about the violence". The main goal is to inform the public about the violence that the children in Macedonia are facing. It is necessary to talk about the violence against children as it can cause serious and long lasting psychological harm. Fear, insecurity, low self-esteem, lack of information and lack of confidence in the institutions that are obliged to provide care and protection are the most common reasons why children are quiet about the violence and are not willing to reveal it and report it.