35 lawyers have attended a five-days training of trainers on “Provision of free legal aid in North Macedonia”. Supported by the European Union and Council of Europe joint programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Türkiye” and in close co-operation with the Bar Association, the participants are trained with relevant knowledge and tools to be future trainers on free legal aid. Recognising the instrumental role of lawyers as secondary legal aid providers, the program emphasises their crucial impact on North Macedonia free legal aid system.

The importance of the future trainers for the Bar Association and for the overall legal aid system in North Macedonia as drivers of change for better implementation of the Law on Free Legal Aid and protection of citizen’s rights, was stressed in the opening remarks by Ljubomir Mihajlovski, President of the Bar Association and Oleg Soldatov, Head of the Council of Europe Programme Office in Skopje.

During the training, the participants had the opportunity to improve their presentation and communication skills through practical exercises and delivering trainings in front of their colleagues on free legal aid topics using different techniques and simulations. These newly trained individuals are expected to conduct capacity-building activities on free legal aid for other lawyers in future.

Maria Marinova Alkalay was the leading international consultant to conduct the soft skills part of this training, while the legal aspects of the training were covered by the local consultants Bojana Netkova, Goce Kocevski, Zoran Drangovski, Maja Atanasova and Elena Georgievska.

This training session is organised with the support of the action “Towards a consolidated and more efficient Free Legal Aid (FLA) system in North Macedonia” in co-operation with the action “Strengthening anti-trafficking action in North Macedonia”  which are part of the joint European Union and Council of Europe programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Türkiye”.