During our projects we frequently travel through Macedonia and communicate with the local population. Not rarely we witnessed brutal violations of the legislation throughout the country, especially by the industry. Simultaneously, we could not but notice that many Macedonian citizens were not familiar with their basic rights, guaranteed by national legislation and international conventions ratified by our country. Additionally, when some of our fellow citizens addressed us with specific questions or requests for assistance with environmental legislation, we found ourselves in an awkward position to not know what to answer or how to help them – we didn’t have any lawyers in our organization. The implementation of environmental legislation is fundamental to the combat for environment protection and very seldom the only way to achieve the right results and changes.
 
This is why we decided to start an environmental law program – “Justice for the Environment”. The team consists of a graduated lawyer, 2 law students and 2 activists.

The main program goal is environment protection “via iuris”.

Specific goals are:

• to improve the capacity of citizens’ associations for utilization of the law as one of the tools for environment protection;
• to raise public awareness and educate the citizens for environmental protection rights guaranteed by law;
• to conduct legal analyses and to spread information and knowledge;
• to improve the cooperation between Macedonian environmental protection and human rights protection associations;
• to improve the implementation of the Aarhus convention in Macedonia;
• to promote public interest law between law students and pro bono practice between lawyers in Macedonia.

 
Front 21/42 is an associate member of "Justice and Environment" European network of environmental law associations.