The fourth and fifth reports of Hungary to the un Committee for the Elimination of all Forms of discrimination against woman [antikvár]

Forward Background of the Report Hungary has become a State Party to the Convention on the Elimination of Ali Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1982. The Convention with its 165 States Parties is the most comprehensive and broad-ranged document dealing with women's rights. Signatory states are expected to submit a report to CEDAW on national implementation of the Convention's provisions every four year. So far Hungary has submitted three reports: in 1982, in 1986 and in 1991. The deliberations of the third report took place only in January 1996. That time CEDAW requested a supplement by addressing a list of questions to the Hungárián Government, to which an addendum was made. The basis of this Consolidated report is consisting of materials prepared by the Ministries concerned. The Ministries were requested to prepare materials relating to each article of the Convention by the Ministry of Social and Family Affairs. Apart írom the ministerial reports, the Office for Women's Issues of the Ministry of Social and Family Affairs had twenty expert opinions prepared as well. At the time of completion of the third periodic report the national mechanism responsible for equal opportunity was not established yet. The coordination of compiling the fourth and fifth Consolidated report was performed by the Office for Women's Issues, operating since 1998 in the Ministry of Social and Family Affairs. The report was referred to give opinion on it to the Council for Women's Issues, established in 1999, to the Women's Subcommission of the Parliament's Committee for Humán Rights, Minorities and Religion, established in 1998, to the Occupation and Employment Committee and to Civil Forum's Organizations of the Office for Women's Issues as well as to other non-governmental organizations. This Report is going to be published alsó as a book aimed at wide dissemination. Course of drawing up the Report A workshop meeting was held with invitation of experts to introduce the English version of the Report of 1991, the responses given to preceding questions of the CEDAW and the comments of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the CEDAW-Report. The experts were invited to the meeting from the possibly broadest rangé in order to make them acquainted with the background of the Report and thereby to prepare a wide-ranging, comprehensive report on the basis of the available documents.