News and press releases

OSCE Secretary General Helga Maria Schmid recognized the outstanding achievements of OSCE staff in advancing gender equality and empowering women in the OSCE at the fourth award ceremony that took place at the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna today.

VIENNA, 11 June 2023 – The Representative on Freedom of the Media (RFoM), Teresa Ribeiro, concluded her visit to Turkmenistan yesterday.

TASHKENT, 10 July 2023 – Uzbekistan’s early presidential election was technically well prepared but lacked genuine competition. Positively, recent reforms to the legal framework have taken some previous ODIHR recommendations into account, but fundamental freedoms remain restricted, the low-key campaign lacked meaningful engagement with voters, and significant procedural irregularities were observed on election day, international observers from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) said in a statement today.

VIENNA, 10 July 2023- The 24th Central Asia Media Conference, titled "At a Crossroads: Safeguarding Media Freedom to Protect Democracy," concluded successfully in Bishkek last Friday. The conference shed light on the intrinsic connection between media freedom and democracy, addressing a wide range of media-related issues. Organized by the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, the event brought together more than 120 participants from Central Asia, Mongolia and beyond.

The OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Minister of Foreign Affairs of North Macedonia Bujar Osmani met today, 7 July, with the newly elected President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, Pia Kauma, Member of Parliament for Finland, on the margins of the OSCE High-Level Conference on Climate Change in Vienna.

On 26 June, Albanian public institutions and civil society organizations signed a new Co-operation Agreement for the National Referral Mechanism for Potential and Victims of Trafficking (NRM), developed thanks to the OSCE Presence’s technical assistance in the 2022–2023 years. The new agreement

Ukrainian and international legal professionals, civic activists, experts and youth join a series of events under the Constitution Week initiative to discuss how to better use constitutional justice for defending human rights in times of war.