News and press releases

Some 75 city administration officials including city council members, public enterprise officials and providers of citizen services from Novi Pazar have successfully completed an OSCE-supported public relations and customer service training course held over a period of three months from November 2017 to January 2018. The final course in a series of three will take place in Kopaonik from 2 to 4 February.

A one-day workshop for a newly-established multi-disciplinary working group on addressing domestic violence issues concluded on 2 February 2018 in the Khuroson district of the province of Khatlon, Tajikistan. The event was organized by the OSCE Programme Office in Dushanbe...

The SMM recorded fewer ceasefire violations in both Donetsk and Luhansk regions compared with the previous reporting period. The Mission continued monitoring the disengagement areas near Stanytsia Luhanska, Zolote and Petrivske. Its access remained restricted in all three areas and elsewhere, including in Horlivka and near Kreminets.* The SMM observed weapons in violation of withdrawal lines near Mykolaivka. The Mission continued to facilitate and monitor repair works to water wells near Krasnyi Lyman and Artema. The SMM visited two border areas not under government control. In Odessa, the SMM observed an event commemorating the Holocaust; in Kyiv, the SMM observed a protest of retired law enforcement personnel...

COPENHAGEN, 1 February 2018- Ignacio Sanchez Amor (MP, Spain), Chair of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s Committee on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Questions, expressed his concern today over developments in the case of Taner Kiliç, Chair of Amnesty International Turkey. Kiliç, accused of being a member of the Fethullah Gülen Terrorist Organization (FETÖ), was granted a conditional release on Wednesday, with the court reversing the decision today...

A team of experts from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) were in Serbia from 29 January to 1 February for a consultation and planning visit within the framework of the ODIHR Support to Elections in the Western Balkans project. The ODIHR team met with senior

VIENNA, 1 February 2018- The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Harlem Désir today expressed his concern about a law criminalizing statements on historical events, such as accusations against Poland or Polish people of complicity in crimes committed during the Holocaust or denial of crimes against the Polish population committed by Ukrainian nationalists, such as the Volyn Massacre during World War II...

More than 30 prosecutors and judges from across Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) attended a training course on trafficking in human beings (THB), which concluded on 1 February 2018 in Sarajevo. The course was organized by the OSCE Mission to BiH, in co-operation with the Judicial and Prosecutorial Training Center of the Federation of BiH.