Expansion of the CSCE/OSCE

30-31 January 1992: At the second Council of Ministers meeting, ten former Soviet Republics are welcomed as participating States, and the Office for Free Elections becomes the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.

At the Second Meeting of the Council of Ministers on 30-31 January 1992 in Prague, ten States that were formerly part of the Soviet Union were welcomed as CSCECSCE
Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe participating States.

The Ministers welcomed Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, following the receipt of letters accepting all CSCE commitments and responsibilities from each of them.

Ten new participating States

The admission of these ten new participating States followed the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union into its constituent republics at the end of 1991.

The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, also formerly part of the Soviet Union, had already become participating States at an Additional Meeting at Ministerial Level in Moscow on 10 September 1991.

On 24 March 1992, three more countries - Croatia, Georgia and Slovenia - were also admitted as participating States at the First Additional Council of Ministers Meeting in Helsinki.

Since that time, the OSCE has continued to expand, with the most recent country to become a participating State being Serbia and Montenegro (then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), which joined on 10 September 2000.

Office for Free Elections becomes ODIHR

The Ministers also decided in Prague to give additional functions to the Office for Free Elections, which was renamed the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).

The new functions of ODIHR included:

• Serving as an institutional framework for sharing and exchanging information that would assist the new democracies in their institution-building;
• Facilitating contacts between those offering such resources and those wishing to make use of them;
• Developing co-operation with the Council of Europe in order to make use of its database of such resources and services;
• Establishing contacts with non-governmental organizations active in the field of democratic institution-building, with a view to enabling interested participating States to make use of their extensive resources and expertise;
• Facilitating co-operation in training and education in disciplines relevant to democratic institutions;
• Organizing meetings and seminars among all participating States on subjects related to the building and revitalization of democratic institutions.