News and press releases

On 23 October, in Tashkent, the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Uzbekistan (PCUz) – together with the National Human Rights Centre, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and its Regional Office for Central Asia, the United Nations Development Programme in Uzbekistan and the Office in Uzbekistan of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation – organized an International Forum titled: "Youth Rights: Possibilities and Mechanisms of Protection". The Forum commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 30th anniversary of the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights.

From 16 to 20 October 2023, the OSCE delivered a national training course on gender-responsive policing of violence against women and girls in Popova Šapka. The course – organized by the OSCE Secretariat’s Transnational Threats Department (TNTD), the OSCE Mission to Skopje, and the Police Training Centre of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in North Macedonia – was delivered by the six national police officers and prosecutors who had previously benefited from the TNTD’s train-the-trainers course in Warsaw. Twenty-two police officers and prosecutors from various municipalities in North Macedonia- twelve women and ten men – learned to respond to cases of violence against women and girls while maintaining a victim-centred approach.

On September 18-22, 2023, the Training Center of the State Financial Intelligence Service under the Ministry of Finance of the Kyrgyz Republic, with the support of the OSCE Programme Office in Bishkek, successfully conducted the autumn camp to prepare the national team of the Kyrgyz Republic for the final of the International Olympiad on Financial Security, which will take place on October 2-6, 2023, in Sochi.

From 16 to 20 October, the OSCE Transnational Threats Department and the OSCE Programme Office in Dushanbe provided an introductory training course on cryptocurrencies and darknet investigations at the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Tajikistan.

Representatives of Turkmenistan’s national media and institutions involved in the implementation of the National Human Rights Action Plan for 2021-2025 (NHRAP) participated in an OSCE-organized training course on media literacy that took place on 19 and 20 October 2023 in Ashgabat. International

Bishkek, 18-20 October- The Service on Countering Illicit Drug Trafficking of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Kyrgyz Republic, in collaboration with the OSCE Programme Office in Bishkek, hosted an Annual K9 competition commemorating National Police Day. The competition will feature K9 units from four government entities, including the State Service for Execution of Punishments under the Ministry of Justice of the Kyrgyz Republic, the Service on Countering Illicit Drug Trafficking of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Kyrgyz Republic, the State Customs Service under the Ministry of Finance of the Kyrgyz Republic, and the Border Service of the Kyrgyz Republic.

The Central Election Commission of Albania in co-operation with the OSCE Presence organized a national high-level conference titled “Voting from abroad- the way forward”, on 19 October 2023. The conference facilitated discussions among relevant stakeholders on how the Assembly can address the legal