Via Youth Debates to More Accountable and More Transparent Local Government in Gostivar

For two weeks, eight high school students from Gostivar have been part of the Debate School organized by the Organized Youth Association from Gostivar. “During these two weeks at the Debate School I have learned new things that I have not learnt at school”, said Onur Akiku, one of the participants; Feta Sakiri, on the other side, was helped by these activities to freely express her thoughts and face the others.

The workshop that took place on 17 November 2022 at the Youth and Community Centre in Gostivar was intense, and the participants learned more about communication, active listening, perception and interview as essential parts of the debate. The new skills were tested on the topic “Should the use of mobile phones be allowed during the class”, and they showed good articulation of their thoughts and sufficient description of arguments.

The motivation of the association to start the project is their effort to promote accountability and transparency of the candidates for mayor of Gostivar during the whole political campaign for the 2021 municipal elections. Unfortunately, according to the association, for now everything remains as words, without implementation. On the other hand, the interest of the young people in accountability and institutional transparency decreases, and there is an impression that there is an intention to suffocate the critical and reasonable voice of the young people. Public debates are very important for transparency, while they are unfortunately not very common in the Municipality of Gostivar, think at OYA.

The goal of the project is to increase the transparency of the local government by stimulating public debate, accountability and inclusion of the young people in decision making.

The Debate School will last for eight weeks, and the young people will have the possibility to debate on various topics, but also to learn a lot about debate and communication, skills that they will use in the next activities, i.e. in the public debates.

The implementation of this debate school is enabled by the project Support to Electoral Reforms in North Macedonia of the Swiss Government, implemented by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (ИФЕС), while the grants are administered by the Macedonian Center for International Support (MCIC).