CROATIA ATTENDS SESSION OF UN COMMISSION ON STATUS OF WOMEN

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK, March 2 (Hina) - A two-week session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women that started in New York on Monday is dedicated to the role of men in achieving gender equality and the role of women in achieving and maintaining peace.#L# The 48th session is being attended by representatives of 45 countries. Croatia is represented by its Ambassador to the UN, Vladimir Drobnjak, and the head of the Foreign Ministry's Human Rights Department, Dubravka Simonovic. On the first day of the session, Croatia supported a declaration tabled by Ireland as the chair of the EU, its associate members, candidate countries and countries included in the process of stabilisation and association. The State Secretary in Ireland's Justice Ministry, William O'Dea, said that the inclusion of women in the process of conflict prevention and resolution was a condition for solving conflicts in a just way. He said women should take part in peace negotiations and post-conflict reconciliation and reconstruction processes. O'Dea stressed that all forms of the discriminatory behaviour of men towards women should be changed and that both men and boys must be partners in the process of building gender equality. Taking part in a debate on the role of statistics in measuring progress in the implementation of the conclusions adopted at the 4th world conference on women held in Beijing ten years ago, Drobnjak said Croatia in 2003 adopted a law which binds state bodies to sort all statistical data by gender and enable free access to it. Drobnjak also said Croatia achieved progress in collecting data on violence against women. One of the objectives of the conference is to encourage countries to set up a data collection system to numerically measure the progress in gender equality and the promotion and protection of women's rights. (Hina) it