Mr. Secretary General,

Mr. President,

Distinguished delegates,

Representatives of NGOs and Civil Society,

I join the previous speakers in congratulating you, President Gurirab, for assuming the presidency of this important Session. It is my great honor to address this Special Session, on behalf of my delegation.

As one of the participating countries in the World Conference on Women in Beijing, Bosnia and Herzegovina, along with the rest of the world community, had expressed full commitment to the Beijing Platform for Action adopted by the Conference. Although my country was in the midst of conflict in September of 1995, today we can still assess gains made during the past five years.

Only a few months after the adoption of the Beijing Declaration, the Dayton Peace Agreement was brokered. As commonly practiced during the peace agreement negotiations, not a single women participated, from either side of the negotiation table.

Thirteen Human Rights Conventions and two Declarations have been incorporated into the legal framework of the Washington and Dayton Peace agreements. The Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, (Annex 4) of Dayton Peace Accord, further provides that the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and its protocols have priority over all other law in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Only recently, we began to address the implementation of Beijing Plan of Action, due to the ending of war and post conflict society rebuilding. As the first step, the Beijing Declaration has been translated into the languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which enabled the wider distribution and outreach of the document and its principles.

Today in Bosnia and Herzegovina, women hold 29% of seats in the House of Representatives, which brings Bosnia and Herzegovina to the top of the scale regarding the participation of women in Parliament. Here I recognize the positive OSCE role, for implementing the Rules of the Temporary Electoral Commission, which called for nomination of one third of female candidates and introduced the requirement that three of the first ten candidates on election lists have to be women. During 1996 and 1997 women held 2% and 5%, respectively, of the seats in the House of Representatives. However, women are underrepresented at the all other levels of the Government Bodies.

In coordination with the Department for Democratization of the OSCE, women in Parliaments have initiated the establishment of permanent commissions within the Parliaments o manage the issue of promotion of the status of women, implementation of the Platform for Action, and to launch the initiative for creation of conditions for the establishment of the Government Services. With all of the above goals in mind, the Government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina has recently opened the Center for Gender Equality.

Women in Bosnia and Herzegovina make up 40 % of the work force. The unemployment rate in Bosnia and Herzegovina is high at 40 %, and of that percentage, 40% of unemployed workforce are women. In Bosnia and Herzegovina girls have the same access o education as boys; slightly more male students enroll into Universities, but slightly more female students graduate from the Universities.

Women in Bosnia and Herzegovina have fed their families when there was no food, women have taken their babies for vaccination, when leaving the safety of their basement shelter was a mortal threat. Women have educated their children when they could not reach schools. Women from Srebrenica are still searching for approximately 10,000 missing fathers, brothers, husbands and other members of their families. Women stand as the true heroes of the society in Bosnia and Herzegovina; our grandmothers, mothers and daughters; Muslim, Orthodox, Catholic, Jewish and other nationalities.

Sisters,

Never again should rape as a weapon of war go unpunished. The International Tribunal for he Former Yugoslavia has recognized rape as a crime against humanity and the Statute o the International Criminal Court has designated physical abuse of women as a crime against humanity. The delegation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the International Criminal Court Preparatory Committee paid a particularly unique and significant role in, for the first time, embracing in the Statute gender based crimes.

The Council of Europe in cooperation with the UN Office for Human Rights (OHCHR), and other partners, had organized a conference in Bosnia and Herzegovina entitled "Trafficking in Human Beings for the Purpose of Sexual Exploitation". The conference s tied light on the scope of the placement of women and girls in appalling conditions o slavery and servitude.

We, the Governments, have to work together to primarily identify and to protect the victims. Rather than prosecuting the victims, we must instead prosecute the traffickers. We have to commit ourselves to undertake all necessary action to combat such transnational crime, and also, to understand the causes of trafficking, such as the economic impoverishment and disruption of social norms, both consequences of the societies in transition. Bosnia and Herzegovina fully supports the work of the Ad Hoc Committee for preparation of the two Protocols to the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, hoping that these important instruments will soon be finalized.

Mr. President,

Full implementation of the human rights of women, and of the girl child, as integral part of all human rights and fundamental freedoms must be encapsulated into gender sensitive policies and programmes, including development at all levels that will foster the empowerment and advancement of women.

Vibrant international and local NGO community's efforts towards gender equality have become a real partner in women's empowerment. Vivid upraise over the past years of the civil society and the NGO community in my country provided counseling, support, domestic violence information hotline and protection.

We believe that gender focus is more than an ideological and moral issue. We have found that the common ground for progress is the improvement of the principles on the status of women to full equality, which also further promotes the society as a whole, regardless of ethnicity, culture, or religion.

Full realization of women's rights is not a gender issue but a humanity issue. Women and girl child are the most vulnerable fabric of a society, and it must be our common objective to ensure an empowering environment based on all rights for all women.