Croatia

Introduction

Croatia’s second and latest National Action Plan was released in 2019 and is intended to run until 2023

Objectives

1. Strengthen the gender perspective through documents, international activities and communication with the public. This includes raising the public’s awareness on the gender perspective and implementation of Security Council Resolutions on Women, Peace and Security through an appropriate communication strategy and cooperation with the media
2. Strengthen the gender perspective through training and education programs. This includes strengthening the network of experts who are specialised in a gendered perspective and providing funding to women-led civil organisations.
3. Introducing gender balance in security and defense system activities. This includes encouraging the employment of women within security-defense systems.
4. Increasing women's share in decision making activities and processes in the fields of security, defense and peace-making
5. Promoting the protection of women's and girls' rights - victims of gender-based violence in conflicts. This includes systematically monitoring the punishment of the perpetrators of gender-based violence, including persons involved in peacekeeping operations
6. Ensuring the implementation of the protection of women's rights, particularly the victims of war suffering in the Republic of Croatia in order to achieve their post-conflict recovery.
7. Promoting the protection of the rights of women and girls being the refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. This includes improving the legal protection of refugees and providing psychosocial support and advice to female refugees, especially victims of human trafficking, forced marriages, crimes of honor, sexual violence, genital mutilation and/or members of particularly sensitive social groups

Commentary:

This NAP has several objectives which are important to advancing the WPS agenda. However, the NAP neglects to specify a budget and its indicators, such as questionnaires, are vague. The NAP could also include more specific detail on how it plans to increase the number of women in its security and defense systems such as how the government will work to eliminate the structural barriers in place which are currently preventing women from having a voice in this sector.

Civil Society:

Although Croatia praises the work of civil society organisations both past and present, they were not consulted in the process of writing this NAP.

Women in Security Institutions

The NAP does explicitly discuss rates of female representation in the armed forces and the police, as well as intelligence agencies, security ministries, diplomacy and other institutions. However, there aren't clear commitments to further developing representation in the NAP.

Peacekeeping Statistics:

As of September 2021, Croatia has contributed 18 peacekeepers to UN peacekeeping operations, 3 of which are women.

References:

https://www.peacewomen.org/sites/default/files/1910041657-nap-en-fin.pdf