WAVE is a network of civil society organizations dedicated to preventing and combating violence against women and children. Currently, special attention is paid to violence in the family and intimate relationships. All organizations fully support the goals set by the United Nations, emphasizing the importance of working to eliminate all forms of violence against children and women in private and public life in accordance with the Vienna Declaration, the Declaration on Violence against Women, the Beijing Platform and other relevant international documents. In order to improve the planning process of WAVE activities and ensure representation of all European regions, a CoCo (Coordinating Committee) was organized in 2009.
This year, the regular annual meeting of CoCo members was held in Vienna from 25 to 28 May, attended by Zdravka Sadžakov and Sanja Sarnavka, as representatives of Baba, an organization that is one of the two focal points for Croatia. There were many topics, and the meeting was truly constructive and useful for everyone. One of the most important conclusions can be highlighted as the necessity of structural changes in the functioning of the CoCO committee - namely, over the course of three years it has become clear that the representation of one organization from each region has not been effective, because, unfortunately, the organizations that have taken over the coordination of activities have not communicated promptly and comprehensively with other members from their region. Following the evaluation, it was agreed that from now on each country will have its own representatives in the CoCo committee, which will result in fairer and more balanced cooperation and joint planning. In particular, there was a discussion of the activities planned for the conference to be held in October 2012 in London - the topics and goals of individual workshops were agreed. A separate item was the consideration of the progress of the adoption of the Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Convention CETS No. 210). By the day of the meeting, the Convention had been signed by 21 countries and ratified only by Turkey. It was agreed that WAVE members should intensify their advocacy activities in order to accelerate the process of signing and ratification. Croatia has not yet signed the Convention, so we must focus on promoting the importance of this document, which establishes uniform standards of protection against violence for women and other victims of domestic violence.
Until the next meeting of the CoCo board, there is a lot of work ahead of all members of the WAVE network.
