During April 18-19, women’s rights activists from Balkans, had the opportunity to gather in Brussels and enhance their lobbying skills for gender equality at the European Parliament. Diverse participants included women’s rights activists from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. The training focused on advocating at the European Parliament and Country Progress Reports.                   

  The participants also took part in a joint session with European Women’s Lobby addressing the need for gendering EU Enlargement and exploring joint opportunities for Women’s Rights Organizations in Western Balkan. Among others the speakers and guests included: Ulrike Lunacek MEP, Jasenko Selimovic, MEP, Karolina Vrethem, Gender Adviser DG NEAR and Joana Maycock. The importance of having a gender perspective and women’s voices heard through the EU enlargement process was emphasized many times. On the other hand, activists from countries that have recently joined the EU (Croatia, Cezchia, Poland etc.) expressed their concerns about women’s rights in their respective countries after joining the EU, noting how gender equality is not treated as a priority anymore. Their advice consisted on making the best out of the accession process as this is the crucial time to influence gender equality and women’s rights.                                          Lobbying is a more specific form of advocacy that includes communication with key targets and influentials through meetings, briefings and conversations to educate and convince them to support and advance your agenda.The approach you can take can be cooperative, confrontational, and persuasive or a mix of them keeping in mind the advantages and disadvantages that come with every approach. Some of the most important advice when lobbying at the European Parliament or even lobbying to the officials in Kosovo is developing clear messages which can be achieved by keeping your messages simple with information that is locally relevant, clear facts and numbers and presenting a solution if possible, always keeping in mind who your audience is. Before any meeting with relevant stakeholders it is very important that you do your research beforehand, and know what their background is, what their interests are, what informal groups they belong to and if their position is relevant to your cause.

This training was supported by Kvinna till Kvinna and their effort of bringing Balkan’s women’s CSO’s advocacy initiatives closer to the European Union.