The United Macedonian Diaspora (UMD) has appointed current Benelux Regional Representative Filip Altiparmakovski to the global UMD Board of Directors as its first-ever Director of European Operations.
“It is a great honor to join the global UMD Board and to take up the role of Director of European Operations. UMD is in a unique position as the only professional organization that represents Macedonians and furthers Macedonia’s interests abroad,” said Altiparmakovski. “Taking into account that the Macedonian Diaspora is twice the size of the population in Macedonia and the biggest financial contributor to the country’s GDP, more and more Macedonians across Europe are realizing that through UMD they can have a say in Macedonian affairs.”
UMD has regional representatives covering Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Russia, and the United Kingdom; future plans are to appoint representatives to cover Sweden and Switzerland. With this new position, Altiparmakovski’s role will be to coordinate our efforts and bring our European-Macedonian communities to a new level of advocacy before European institutions in Brussels.
“As a Dutch and Macedonian citizen with a background in international relations and law, Filip Altiparmakovski is ideally suited to lead our initiatives in Brussels,” said UMD Chairman Stojan Nikolov.
Biography
Filip Altiparmakovski was born and raised in Bitola, Macedonia. Filip left Macedonia at the age of 18 to pursue a degree in international relations at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He also holds a LL.B from Amsterdam Law School, a master’s degree in law (LL.M) from Leiden Law School and a master’s degree (M.A.) in Conflict Resolution from the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom.
Currently based in Amsterdam, Filip is a young lawyer with a multidisciplinary background and a keen interest in Macedonian (and international) affairs. He has previously worked in the international public sector in The Hague and is currently focusing on several side-projects that have always interested him. This includes researching the following topics: the legal aspects of the obstacles to admission of Macedonia to international organizations such as the UN and NATO; the validity of an amnesty for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the 2001 conflict in Macedonia; and the Macedonian minority rights cases against Greece before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.