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Aarhus Centres: A Decade of Partnership in Implementing the Aarhus Convention

Consolidated Summary, OSCE-Japan Conference, Tokyo, 16-17 June 2014

Opinion on the Draft Law of Ukraine on Police and Police Activities (1 December 2014) notes that this Draft Law contains many positive aspects which correspond to international standards and good practices. Certain areas, however, would benefit from improvement: • the provisions of the Draft Law on the roles and responsibilities of individual police authorities/units, and on inter-agency cooperation mechanisms should be improved and clarified. • the Draft Law should enhance accountability of the police by including clear and independent complaints mechanisms, and should introduce specific provisions to ensure that key human rights standards are followed. • further discussions on the Draft Law should be conducted with all relevant stakeholders from different parts of society, and the Draft Law itself should undergo a proper and realistic impact assessment, including a full financial impact assessment.

The objective of this paper is to outline the level of political participation of Maltese women in local councils, national and European parliaments. When the level of participation of women in these political structures falls drastically below that of Maltese men – as in the case of national elections- this paper sets out to delineate what obstacles might prevent women’s representation at this level and what might need to be done to ensure that more women are elected. The paper takes into consideration the six possible areas of intervention proposed by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) in the baseline study entitled “Gender equality in elected office: a six-step action plan” (Norris and Krook, 2011), namely constitutional rights, electoral system, legal quotas, party rules and recruitment procedures, capacity development and parliamentary reform.

 

April- July 2014

This Opinion on the impact of the ratification of the Istanbul Convention for Montenegro was prepared in response to the above request. The OSCE/ODIHR conducted this assessment within its mandate as established by the OSCE Action Plan for the Promotion of Gender Equality, which states that “[t]he ODIHR, in co-operation with other international organizations and relevant national bodies and institutions, will assist OSCE participating States in complying with international instruments for the promotion of gender equality and women’s rights, and in reviewing legislation to ensure appropriate legal guarantees for the promotion of gender equality in accordance with OSCE and other commitments”.