News and press releases

KYIV, 28 October 2020 – The Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office in Ukraine and in the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG), Ambassador Heidi Grau, made the following statement to the press after the regular meetings of the TCG and its Working Groups held through video conferencing:

The impact of emergencies on violence against women and the need for gender-sensitive crisis responses were in focus at a special event organized on the margins of the third OSCE Gender Equality Review Conference on 27 October 2020.

VIENNA, 21 October 2020- The OSCE’s vital role in the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda was the focus of the high-level event “OSCE enhancing the UN Security Council Resolution 1325: Gender equality for a more peaceful world”.

The Balkan Asset Management Interagency Network (BAMIN), which is being supported by the OSCE through an extra-budgetary project, organized online workshops on the management of movable assets seized from criminals, particularly confiscated vehicles, from 6 to 16 October 2020. More than 50 members of the judiciary and law enforcement representatives from some 14 full member, associate and observer jurisdictions of BAMIN as well as participants from Georgia, Greece, Italy and the Netherlands participated in the workshops. The workshops were conducted over an online platform and involved participant engagement in different cases studies...

VIENNA, 15 October 2020 – The Office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media (RFoM) published today a legal review of the draft Federal Act on Measures to Protect Users on Communications Platforms (Kommunikationsplattformen-Gesetz – KoPI-G) by the Republic of Austria. The review was officially submitted to the President of the National Council, Wolfgang Sobotka, and to the Federal Chancellery of the Republic of Austria on 15 October 2020.

SEOUL/VIENNA, 15 October 2020 – New technologies need to be backed up with necessary human rights safeguards, furthering the OSCE’s comprehensive approach to security, say participants at the fourth inter-regional conference on the Impact of Emerging Technologies on International Security and Terrorism. Foreign Affairs Ministry of Korea, in co-operation with the OSCE Transnational Threats Department (TNTD) and the OSCE External Co-operation Section, organized the virtual conference on 14 October 2020...

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the landmark UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS), the OSCE and UN Women joined forces to host an online event on 12 October 2020. Experts reviewed commitments and charted the way forward on this landmark resolution, the first international agreement recognizing that conflict affects women differently than men and calling for the meaningful participation of women in peace processes. A wide range of WPS practitioners from civil society and women’s organizations, government officials and representatives of international organizations participated in the event.