News and press releases

VIENNA/TIRANA, 10 October 2020 – OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Albania’s Prime Minister and Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Edi Rama, welcomed news of a humanitarian ceasefire in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict context. “We need stability, both on the ground and in the process led by the Minsk Group Co-Chairs,” Rama said. “The agreement reached in Moscow overnight by Armenia and Azerbaijan puts us on the path towards the resumption of substantive negotiations in the agreed format,” Rama added.

VIENNA/TIRANA, 9 October 2020 – The Albanian Chairmanship has issued a call for unity in Kyrgyzstan, noting its concern with the worsening situation. “We call on all political leaders and on the citizens of Kyrgyzstan to refrain from violence and act in the interest of maintaining stability in the country.”

Effective rehabilitation and reintegration of those who participated in violent extremism activity is the focus of a new guidebook launched at a webinar organized by the Action against Terrorism Unit (ATU) of the OSCE Transnational Threats Department for more than 80 participants from civil society, governments, academia and international organizations based in South-Eastern Europe on 8 October 2020...

VIENNA, 9 October 2020 – The 22nd Central Asia Media Conference, organized online by the Office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media (RFoM), concluded today. Over the course of the three-day conference, around 150 journalists, representatives of NGOs, academia, international experts, and government agencies from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan as well as Mongolia, discussed a broad range of issues related to freedom of the media and freedom of information in the region, with a special focus on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic...

The Annual Prosecutorial Symposium, which, due to the pandemic, took place in an online format on 8 and 9 October 2020, gathered some 150 prosecutors, judges and other criminal justice professionals who took part in a number of panel discussions on criminal matters...

The role of parliament in oversight of the security sector in Uzbekistan was the focus of an OSCE event in Tashkent on 8 October 2020. Twenty members of the Oliy Majlis (parliament), coming from both the Legislative Chamber and the Senate, took part in the event. The workshop was organized, in a blended format, jointly by the OSCE Conflict Prevention Centre and the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Uzbekistan, and supported by speakers from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly...

The parliamentary elections in Serbia were administered efficiently despite challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but dominance of the ruling party, including in the media, was a cause for concern. These are some of the main conclusions from the 21 June 2020 elections, as detailed in the final report published by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).