Commissioner for the Protection of Equality, Brankica Janković, participated in the two-day regional conference “Population and Development: Ensuring Rights and Choices” in Geneva, where she spoke in the thematic session “Inequalities, Social Inclusion and Rights”.

Presenting examples of good practice from Serbia, Janković evoked the adopted initiative of the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality, by which social service providers were exempted from paying tax, which is one of the very important decisions of the Ministry of Finance that gave a new impetus to the development of support services for service users. When it comes to improving sexual and reproductive health, work is also being done to expand the list of contraceptives so that they are available to everyone, and the initiative to exempt menstrual hygiene products from paying value added tax or to reduce the VAT rate for these products, which are necessary for every woman in a certain period of her life, is also important.

Janković said that the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality will continue to implement activities for the promotion and protection of human rights – the right to a dignified life, the right to freedom, protection from violence and discrimination, the right to basic health care and the right to bodily integrity. She also recalled some of the recently implemented activities in cooperation with UNFPA, such as the “Call to Action” against discrimination against the elderly at the regional, national and local levels, as well as the #bodyright campaign aimed at raising awareness of the dangers of gender-based violence in the digital environment.

The regional conference in Geneva was organized by the UN Economic Commission for Europe and the Regional Office of the UN Population Fund for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, on the occasion of marking 30 years since the first International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo (ICPD), where 179 countries signed the Action Program, a document that marked a fundamental change in the way of understanding issues related to population and development. The delegation of the Republic of Serbia was led by the Minister for Family Care and Demography, Darija Kisić Tepavčević.