The Karat Coalition is a child of the Beijing Conference where we – women from Central and Eastern Europe – started the discussion on the need of the subregional cooperation.

We noticed in Beijing and Huairou that our subregion didn’t exist, that our problems and perspectives are not visible at UN forum.

The network was formally established as the Karat Coalition at the conference held in Warsaw in February 1997.

Very often the people ask me what does the name of Karat mean, and they expect the description of its symbolic meaning. They are disapointed when they learn that it’s the name of the hotel in Warsaw where the participants of the first Karat Coalition meeting stayed.

The Karat Coalition is a Central Eastern European network of women’s NGos from 13 countries: Albania, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Yugoslavia. It addopted the following mission: to promote and ensure de facto gender equality by promoting the Platform for Action and National Action Plans, monitoring their implementation and raising visibility of the problemes and perspectives of women at international level.

Our main aims are as follows:

1. empowerment of women in the CEE sub-region through a participatory consultative process at UN level;

2. strengthening the role of women’s NGOs in the democratic transformation process through an active involvement in the UN reporting process;

3. advocating for raising visibility of the problemes and perspectives of women at the UN level.

Last year at the Commisssion on the Status of Women we presented the regional report on Institutional Mechanisms for the Advancement of Women. The report was based on the national report prepared by the women’s NGOs from 10 countries. We stated in it that:

1. women’s issues are of low priority to the governments in our region;

2. international commitments to secure equal opportunities for women are de facto not being respected;

3. new democracies are marked by frequent changes of governments followed by changes in policy and administrative personnel at all levels which results in a lack of continuity in the treatment of women’s issues;

4. gender awarness is missing at all levels of society as is the national machinery needed for promotion of such awarness.

All of these facts are reflected by lack or non-existence of a functioning national machinery embedded in the government structures of the individual countries. Women’s NGOs play an active role in our region. Without their pressure there would not be any national machinery or a National Action Plan in most of the countries.

The presentation of regional report attracted a quite big audience. And I think that wte women who came were much more interessted in a new phenomenon – the NGOs from the Central Eastern Europe united than in the sucjet of this meeting.

Since March 1999 we are committted to empowering women to participate in the Beijing+5 process, and beyond. Instead of training women in leadership, the Karat organizes regular meetings and sends many delegates to the UN Beijing+5 activities, so that we can learn through active participation.

We are also involved in the reporting process. Some of the Karat country members produced alternative repports on implementation of the Platform for Action which included the evaluation of the government report by NGOs.

In some of the countries the government report was not available to the NGOs or was available very late, in spite of the multiple requests made by NGOs (for exemple in Poland at the end of November last year, in Bulgaria – in February this year. That’s why some of the Karat countries prepared only the national recommendations instead.

The recommendations are the product of consultation with NGOs. The questionnaire about the emerging issues and postulates for action to the government were sent out to many women’s groups in the respective countries (in case of Poland to 240 NGOs, Czech Republic - ?.......),