Croatia's Minister of Foreign and European Affairs, Gordan Grlic-Radman, speaking in New York on Monday, stressed the importance of women's inclusion and their participation in international agreements.

Grlic-Radman attended a conference on the protection of the rights of women and girls, which discussed ways of including women and girls faced by crimes and human rights violations, particularly in Yemen, Ethiopia, Syria and Afghanistan.

He said that it was necessary to promote the role of women in participating in international agreements, “because such agreements have proved to be tenable in the long term, while these agreements in Afghanistan excluded women, which is not good.”

Grlic-Radman is in New York to attend the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly. He will use his visit to the United States to hold a number of bilateral meetings and to visit the Croatian communities in New York, Pittsburgh and Chicago.

The Croatian minister is visiting the US from 19 to 25 September. He is due to attend the UN General Assembly meeting from 20 to 23 September, and on its margins he is scheduled to meet with his counterparts from Europe and the world, including the foreign ministers of Libya and Kosovo and the Council of the Jewish Community.

Grlic-Radman has announced that he would talk about the situation in the Croatian neighbourhood, notably in Montenegro, and that he would highlight the need to change electoral law in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He said that Croatia is very concerned about what happened recently in Montenegro, adding that Montenegro’s pro-European president Milo Đukanović, recently visited Croatia and drew attention to “destabilising factors in the immediate neighbourhood and the influence of third countries.”