“The National Assembly has recognised the need to strengthen gender equality, and proved it through the two years of operation of the Women’s Parliamentary Network. Our women MPs have in the past year fully dedicated themselves to developing strong ties between women, intensifying cooperation with local self-governments, to economic empowerment and combating violence. I would especially like to point out the initiative to establish a regional network of South East European women parliamentarians. One of the important results the WPN managed to achieve is the establishment of a women’s network in the Assembly of AP Vojvodina and the creation of more than 60 local councilwomen’s networks”, said the National Assembly Speaker.

The Speaker said that women’s rights are an integral part of the universal human rights and, in line with all international documents, have to be guaranteed, respected and protected.

“We worked long and hard to boost the representation of women in politics. I will remind you that in the year 2000 the parliament was only 12.4% women, while today’s National Assembly boasts 84 women MPs which is more than a third of the parliament. That gives our country the high rank of 26^th in the world”, stressed Speaker Gojkovic.

She reminded the participants that, besides herself, the Speaker, women currently head eight of the parliament’s 20 committees. Women also head the delegations to the parliamentary assemblies of OSCE, Council of Europe, South East Europe Cooperation Process, Francophonie, to the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the parliamentary dimension of the Central European Initiative. Gojkovic stressed that Serbia today has a harmonised legislative and institutional framework in the sphere of gender equality and its priorities are to encourage women to take more active part in political and public life and in decision-making.

The Third National Conference was co-organised with the OSCE Mission to Serbia. Deputy Head of the OSCE Mission to Serbia MichaelUyehara greeted the participants saying that it was an honour to be able to support such an important issue on the behalf of the OSCE. He commended the progress made as regards the inclusion of women in politics, stressing that the OSCE considers gender responsive budgeting to be an extremely important topic.

The participants were also addressed by the Commissioner for Protection of Equality Brankica Jankovic, and on the behalf of the Government of the Republic of Serbia, by Branka Draskovic, advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister on gender equality.

The conference comprised three panel discussions and three working groups on: gender responsive budgeting at the local level and the role of local gender equality mechanisms and councilwomen’s networks; gender responsive budgeting at the level of the republic and province; and budget execution monitoring from the aspect of gender equality and the role of the Women’s Parliamentary Network and the National Assembly in the process.

The discussions were followed by conclusions and closing remarks.