Ethnically and Gender Inclusive Grass-Root LGBT Movements in Macedonia

Policy research and advocacy project “Ethnically and Gender Inclusive Grass-Root LGBT Movements in Macedonia” is conducted with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands in Macedonia.

This project will strive to advocate for changes of the legal and social status of the LGBTI people, raising awareness of the general public in the Republic of Macedonia regarding the LGBTI human rights and the need of greater social inclusion, but also promote knowledge in the area by pursing research and promoting the queer studies.

ISSHS will endeavor to facilitate the introduction of the basic infrastructure (in the sense of networking and both informal and formal organization) that will enable forms of LGBTI activism that will be more accommodating of the needs of the lesbian and transgender persons as well as of the other ethnicities.

Activities undertaken include:
– Establishing a team on grass-root level of representatives of the community and its movement providing stake-holders’ participation in the designing (and, consequently, executing) the field research process envisaged as a fact finding centered and strategy for advocacy designed paper
– Developing questionnaires, semi-structured in-depth interview forms, focus group questionnaires and concepts for personal oral histories for the field research to be carried out
– Executing a discourse analysis of country’s legislation and policy related documents of the LGBTI movement in Macedonia

Carrying out a comparative analysis of the findings with the EU and regional legislation as well as with the discourses present in the policy related documents coming from the internationally influential organizations in order to measure the level of context sensitivity within the discourses at stake and propose modes of their contextualization