Background
The rights of minorities have been subject to the work of a variety of institutions, international organisations and NGOs. Monitoring their implementation however is an exercise that can still be considered in its incipient phase, especially when it comes to a systematic approach, taking into consideration the sometimes substantial differences on local level within one country or even within one region.
In Southeast Europe, monitoring of minority rights and their implementation has been so far conducted in two (or almost three) different ways, namely through the Council of Europe's Monitoring Mechanism of the Framework Convention on National Minorities, through so-called “shadow reports” to the CoE reports, generated by civil society and finally through the EU's accession mechanism, in the form of a variety of reports.
Although all these mechanisms actively seek and are based on local input from both government institutions and civil society, they provide for the overall picture and do not challenge authorities on other than central, state level. Experience however has shown that a variety of problems related to minority rights are generated and exist on local level, with the local authorities often lacking the instruments and the knowledge to address them adequately. Furthermore, all countries in Southeast Europe have embraced decentralisation as a major instrument not only of derogating power to the local and regional levels, but also to provide more effective citizen participation. The latter has often been paid a lot of lip service to, while we still find local authorities mostly acting in a closed environment and input from civil society being incidental and often based on personal relations rather than being a systematic and mutually accepted mechanism.
On the other hand, the process of transformation towards compatibility with the European Union will enforce the modernisation of local administration. It will be expected from local authorities to self-evaluate their work in order to be able to properly conduct a policy and resource planning. Often, local administration finds itself overburdened with this task, which is additionally made more difficult by the complex of personal relations and dependencies still prevailing.

Aims of the Programme
Based upon experience in Scandinavic countries and on a model developed and applied in Germany to monitor the local administrations' orientation towards the public, the citizens, this programme proposes a methodology to monitor the actual implementation of minority rights on local level.
Why? The main reasoning behind proposing this approach is that the actual relevant interface for minority-majority relations is the local level. While constitutional solutions have been found in most countries in SEE, and legislation is well under way, partially installing regional advisory mechanisms, it is the local level, where the day-to-day communication occurs. It is also the local level, where the definition of minority can differ from the regional or national one.
As said before, local authorities are the weakest link in the state power hierarchy. While the decentralisation processes are given high priority in the reform process, local administration is often left alone with coping with the tasks and responsibilities. On the other hand, minority organisations often formulate their demands in a vague, theoretical way, which often ignores the real capacity and willingness of the local administration to meet these demands.

The proposed model would profit both sides. It would provide citizens and their organisations with a tool to assess the performance of local administration and propose enhancements in their policies, while at the same time offering a self-evaluation tool to the local authorities and a way to improve their capacity to properly and openly address issues raised by their constituents. Since the initiation of the process would be based on a high level of consensus, and the implementation of the model would imply a high degree of participation both horizontal and vertical, it is likely that the results would be acknowledged by all actors implied and would induce a political process of addressing real shortcomings. Issue-based policy making would therefore start to prevail over the rather declarative style, which can be still found so often. The so often stressed principle of citizen participation would mutate from a phrase to a practical instrument.
This methodology proposes a mechanism, which would be repetitive in itself, thus ensuring continuity in the process of assessment, (self)-evaluation and implementation. The hope is that, once established, this method could become a valuable instrument to move issues related to minority rights forward in a timely and appropriate way. Ultimately, due to its inclusive nature and because of its compromise and consensus based approach, this model could constitute a conflict prevention mechanism in itself.

Proposed Methodology
As mentioned before, the proposed module would be a cyclic, self-repetitive one. The proposed cycle would consist of ten steps, which build upon each other in a logical series:

•  Decision of municipal council.
•  Organisation: constitution of a program group
•  Administration self-evaluation
•  Polls and citizens' input
•  Stocktaking
•  Status Report
•  Stakeholder input
•  Report/Proposal to the local authorities
•  Evaluation of Implementation
•  Periodical Recurrence

The cyclic recurrence of the proposed model can be illustrated in the following way: