North Macedonia - Compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights - Violence and Discrimination Against Women - May 2025
Country: North Macedonia
Issues: Gender-Based Violence
Mechanism: UN Human Rights Committee
Report Type: Shadow/Parallel Report
This report highlights critical concerns regarding North Macedonia's compliance with its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). While North Macedonia has taken formal steps to align its national legislation with the Istanbul Convention, most notably through the 2021 Law on Prevention and Protection from Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (VAW and DV Law) and amendments to the Criminal Code, implementation remains weak, fragmented, and increasingly politicized. The reporting period was marked by intensified political instability, the rise of anti-gender narratives within government discourse, and open attempts to roll back existing gender equality protections, erase references to gender equality from national legislation, and deprioritized funding for gender-based violence response mechanisms.
Using practice-based evidence, this report provides concrete evidence of these failures and urges the Human Rights Committee to issue strong recommendations to the State party to ensure victim-centered, gender-sensitive implementation of its obligations under the ICCPR and the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, (“the Istanbul Convention”).
