The new priorities of the Croatia’s foreign policy as it pertains to human rights are based on the protection of the rights of religious persons, the right to religious belief and the protection of the family. Croatia will devote special attention to the promotion and protection of the traditional family, based on the marriage between a woman and a man, as the “natural and fundamental unit of human society”. The notion of sexual and reproductive health and rights has no consensual definition at the international level, or even at the EU level. “Taking this into consideration, Croatia opts to interpret this notion as excluding the right to abortion”. Croatia maintains the right to promoted the above positions in all multilateral for a that it is a member to. These are statements taken from the Croatian comments to the Draft Council Conclusions on EU Priorities at UN Human Rights Fora in 2017. The contents of the document were published in print by Novi list on February 24.

The above are parts of a document dated February 22 2017; interestingly, the only comments to the Draft Council Conclusions came from Croatia, Hungary and Poland. Croatia’s position has had
a particular impact, since Croatia became a member of the UN Human Rights Council in Fall 2016, thanks to a membership campaign endorsing some drastically different values, as is still evidenced by the website of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs.