The overall goal of this program is to strengthen linkages among citizens, political parties, and the Assembly to incentivize government bodies to be more responsive to public interests. To achieve this, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) has three mutually reinforcing objectives:

• To foster the participation of women, youth, and minorities in politics as community activists, political party members, and elected representatives
• To increase both the quality and effectiveness of lawmaking and oversight in the Assembly
• To heighten public engagement in the legislative and electoral process

To achieve these objectives, the program is working to promote integration of civic engagement throughout Kosovo. Targeted assistance includes:

• Working on issue-based advocacy driven by women, youth, and minority communities, particularly Kosovar Serbs in the North; party policy development and coordination with parliamentary caucuses.
• Improving informed lawmaking and effective oversight processes.
• Improving stronger observation of election processes.

Assistance to political parties: NDI works with Kosovo’s political parties to further establish organizational structures, strengthen their internal capacities to respond to citizen’s demands, and promote the inclusion of women and youth in party structures. To ensure more robust minority participation, NDI works closely with minority parties on organizational structure, negotiation strategy, and using parliamentary procedure to promote their positions more effectively. NDI works to address barriers to women’s political participation by strengthening women’s political skills, enabling them to demonstrate their contributions and skills to party leaders, and empowering them to earn media coverage and engage directly with citizens to portray themselves as competent politicians and advocates for community issues.

Assistance to the Assembly: NDI works with the Assembly leadership and secretariat to improve the management of parliamentary groups in order to help them translate policy priorities into legislative action, advance the quality of legal analysis and policy research to ensure more informed decision making across committees, improve parliamentary oversight mechanisms with a particular focus on budgetary oversight, and increase parliamentary transparency and openness.

Project Duration: Sept. 2013-Sept. 2017

USAID Contact: Albana Kusari

Partner: National Democratic Institute (NDI)

Geographic Target: Kosovo