The Battle for Sex Education in North Macedonia Amid Fake News Backlash

SKOPJE — “There is a lot of fake news spreading,” said Nadica Banishka, a 21-year-old student and sex educator for the non-governmental organization Health and Education Research Association (HERA) in Skopje, North Macedonia’s capital city. “People are saying that [their] children will be taught about sex education from first grade — which is not true, but it’s definitely a thing that’s being discussed on the internet.”

Over the last few months, a slew of misinformation and outrage perpetuated by concerned parents have plagued the organization Banishka works for. HERA, which is part of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, has facilitated afterschool sex education programs across the country for years and promotes the health, reproductive, and sexual rights of marginalized groups — making it a prime target for right-wing and conservative movements in the country.

While the organization provides various free health and social services, such as the Mobile Ambulances for HIV Testing and the First Family Center, it has been targeted over the past year for its advocacy around implementing sex education in North Macedonia’s school curricula by people who believe such education would endanger both their children as well as their traditional values.

There is no formal, uniform sex education in North Macedonia’s education system, leaving those topics to be folded into other school subjects, such as biology, with no more than a passing mention. According to HERA, in North Macedonia’s schools, only 13 percent of pupils have been taught about condoms, and hardly 2 percent about oral contraceptives.

HERA’s peer educators like Banishka, along with colleagues Simona Georgievska, 21, and Katerina Ivanova, 20, have been in the field for years filling this gap in education to young people. What’s more, HERA’s Comprehensive Sexual Education (CSE) program covers much more than just basic medical information about sex; it also covers topics that relate to social aspects of sex, from sexual harassment and gender roles to what makes a healthy relationship and bodily autonomy for young persons.

After years of sustained pressure from activists and civil society organizations, the government announced in November 2019 a new year-long sexual education pilot program that would implement CSE to ninth-grade students in four schools in Tetovo and Skopje — in both urban and rural environments — as an elective subject, beginning in September of this year.

HERA supported preparation for the pilot program by training the teachers who will be teaching the CSE curriculum in the fall. Ivanova, who is also a second-year law student, helped with training and feels confident about the process going forward.

“I have a lot of hope in the pilot project itself and I can’t wait to see how it goes,” said Ivanova. “If [the teachers] ever need any support, we will be there for them as peer educators.”

Getting CSE into even the pilot phase has been far from easy for both HERA and for Mila Carovska, the minister of education who has been a prominent institutional supporter for sex education. One far-right organization called Od Nas Za Nas (which translates to “From Us For Us”) has dedicated the past few months to misrepresenting the CSE program.

According to an official statement by HERA, the far-right organization’s website claimed that HERA “aims to confuse children about their gender; to encourage children’s sexualization from an early age; and to promote abortion for profit,” among other salacious claims.

Gordana Godjo, president of Od Nas Za Nas, has been known to spread various conspiracy theories, such as that Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to the U.S. president, approved funding for the Wuhan lab where coronavirus research was being conducted, and that UNICEF is promoting sexting to children. On the organization’s website, Godjo has shared other disproven claims about COVID-19 vaccines, including that vaccination has been linked to autism.

Od Nas Za Nas has since focused its misinformation campaigns away from the pandemic to sex education — peddling allegations that sex education indoctrinates children with “transgender ideology” (thereby allegedly “confusing” them about their gender and sexuality) and that Planned Parenthood is involved in an illegal trade of aborted fetuses.

Godjo’s ideology leaked into the mainstream when the popular Macedonian writer Venko Andonovski made an incoherent argument against CSE in his column for the newspaper Nova Makedonija denouncing sex education for not including the “spiritual” aspects of love within its teachings, and cited Od Nas Za Nas in his diatribe.

Andonovski also accused “the sex education agenda” of shielding itself behind children to push for social acceptance — and, indeed, “VIP treatment” — of homosexuality. Lastly, in his column, he put forth explicitly transphobic views in his nod to Od Nas Za Nas: “This is why I feel a closeness to [this] human rights association, which takes a critical attitude toward the introduction of transgender ideologies in education.”

In North Macedonia, nonconforming sexualities and different gender identities are rarely discussed in mainstream discourse; only the second-ever Pride parade will take place this year on June 26.

After Andonovski’s column, Od Nas Za Nas continued sharing fake news about HERA and the upcoming pilot program.

“I do not know if they are doing it on purpose because they want to create panic or if they do not know anything about CSE,” said Georgievska. “For these kinds of people, the word ‘sex’ is emphasized, so they think that their children will learn sex poses in class.”

Georgievska named the prevalence of traditional and religious values as one obstacle, but all three educators pointed to an educational gap.

“There most definitely is a gap in sex education in Macedonia because there is no sex education in Macedonia,” said Banishka. “If the teachers can’t talk about it, then the students don’t feel like they can ask about it, and the circle goes on and the gap gets wider.”

“Sex education is often discussed as something that should not be talked about in school,” Carovska, the minister of education, told the Macedonian language edition of Deutsche Welle. “But when we simplify it and say that we are talking about nonviolence, accepting ourselves and our bodies, building relationships with other people, building a partnership, and discussing our emotions, then everyone says, ‘Yes, it is necessary.’”

On March 25, HERA and two other NGOs — the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights and Coalition Margins — filed criminal charges against Od Nas Za Nas for inciting hatred and discrimination not only toward civil society organizations but also toward children, women, and the LGBTQ+ community. HERA has also filed a lawsuit to establish civil liability for insult and defamation.

Since the announcement of that filing, the right-wing organization seemingly had gone quiet. However, since May 11, their Facebook page has once again become more active, appearing to promote protests against proposed legislation regarding the digitization of some textbooks and updating their content, including for the explicit purpose of reflecting gender sensitivity.

“We as parents do not have a problem with anyone’s choice, but obviously someone has a problem with our choice,” Jana Stojanovska, a mother of a second-grader, told PlusInfo at a protest on May 26. “Sex education should be a right of choice, not an obligation.” So far, there are no indications that any child would be forced to take CSE.

In a June 10 interview with infamous right-wing talk show host and conspiracy theory promoter Janko Ilkovski, Godjo made a myriad of claims about gender sensitive education, which she claimed would be incorporated into all school subjects “aside from math.” She then urged viewers to “do their own research” instead of trusting official government sources.

Some of Godjo’s talking points appear to have been taken straight out of the U.S.’ anti-trans playbook: she denounced guidance given to teachers about definitions of gender identity, warning viewers about the dangers of trans people using bathrooms in accordance to their identified gender, as well as the negative impact of trans women (whom she referred to as “biological males”) on women’s sports.

“The end goal is the destruction of the family as a primary unit of society,” Godjo said.

Rebutting Godjo and others who believe that their children will be forced to take CSE, Ivanova stated that the actual end goal is to have CSE as one of many electives in the Macedonian school system — not a compulsory school subject, asserting that HERA and other advocates are simply fighting for access to sex education in schools.

“Everyone thinks it’s just about sex,” said Banishka, “[but] most of the components of sex education are focused on people building better relationships with themselves and everyone else, and just living a healthier life with respect to your sexual, mental, and physical health — all of which are related together in sex education.”

The fight for wider acceptance of CSE is certainly ongoing in North Macedonia. At this point, many questions are yet to be answered with regard to how the pilot program will be received in September. Equally uncertain is whether Od Nas Za Nas will continue to create more obstacles for sex educators in the months to come.