Macedonian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights

Human rights activists in North Macedonia say they are encouraged by the decision of the alliance led by the ruling Social Democrats to make the number of women and men MP candidates on their election lists equal.

The move, announced this week, is the first time that one of the main political parties or alliances in the country has opted for completely equal gender representation.

A group of NGOs in Macedonia has given a recently formed movement, Stop Operation Soros, SOS, a week to apologise or face legal charges over its claims that local NGOs are receiving money from abroad to destabilise the country.

The election monitoring coalition We Decide! (Nie Odlucuvame!), which is running an SOS hotline for reporting electoral irregularities and offers legal help to voters, warned at a press conference on Tuesday that the authorities have failed to fully clean up the electoral roll.

Macedonian Civil rights activists and judicial experts have called the election of Jovan Ilievski as Macedonia's judge in the European Court of Human Rights a serious blunder.

His many critics at home say he kept the prosecution system under government control and is unfit for the post.

As the SJO prepares on Thursday to file its second half-year report to parliament and the prosecutor's council, legal experts say the presidential pardon of politicians in April - retracted in June - explains why there have been no indictments of corrupt officials so far.

Authorities in Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia said they are on heightened alert about possible militants concealing themselves among the refugees using the Balkan route to reach Western Europe after unconfirmed reports that one of the Paris attack suspects passed through the region.

Over 40 NGOs said they opposed the plan revealed last week by the embattled Gruevski, insisting it would be politically risky to undertake such an operation amid a deep political crisis that revolves around allegations of illegal, government-orchestrated mass surveillance.

Top activists from leading NGOs like the Macedonian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, Transparency - Macedonia, the Open Society Foundation - Macedonia, CIVIL - Centre for Freedom and the Metamorphosis foundation have been tapped for years, the opposition Social Democrats' leader Zoran Zaev alleged at a press conference on Monday.

Macedonia's Independent Journalists' Trade Union, SSNM, has slated a ban on the publication of compromising material in relation to the case involving the head of the opposition Social Democratic Party, SDSM.

Macedonia's latest addition to the constitutional amendment on marriage, enacted in summer, is worse than the original proposal as even non-marital unions are now limited to unions of one man and one woman, NGO representatives told parliament on Monday.