News and press releases

OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Kairat Abdrakhmanov visited Norway from 6 to 10 November 2023.

Sarajevo, 10 November 2023- With less than 11 months until the 2024 Local Elections scheduled for next October, the Head of the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ambassador Brian Aggeler, notes that authorities in BiH have so far failed to bring the BiH Election Law in line with international standards and best practices for democratic elections. The necessary amendments have been clearly and repeatedly enumerated and recommended, also after the last general elections held in October 2022, by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), including in its Election Observation Mission Final Report issued in February 2023, and by the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) and European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission).

The OSCE Secretariat Transnational Threats Department and United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT) delivered the 7th Passenger Data Exchange Seminar as a back-to back event with the 3rd in-person meeting of the Eastern European Informal Working Group on Passenger Data (EE IWG) on 8-10 November 2023.

From 6 to 11 November, the OSCE Transnational Threats Department (TNTD) and the OSCE Centre in Ashgabat delivered the second part of an introductory course on digital forensics for law enforcement representatives from Turkmenistan.

On November 10, 2023, within the framework of the implementation of the Anti-Drug Programme by the Cabinet of Ministers of the Kyrgyz Republic, the Service for Combating Illicit Drug Trafficking of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MoI) of the Kyrgyz Republic, in collaboration with the OSCE Programme Office in Bishkek, convened a roundtable discussion for students of the Faculty of Law at the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University. The focal theme of the discussion was "Prevention of Drug Use Among Young People."

More than 50 professionals from five countries participated in a week-long simulation-based training exercise on combating trafficking in human beings in Brühl, Germany this week, marking the first such regional training between the OSCE and the Council of Baltic Sea States.

On 8 and 9 November, the OSCE Mission to Montenegro and the Ministry of Interior organized an international conference in Budva that brought together representatives from the Ministry, Police Directorate, Police Academy and University of Montenegro. Five higher education institutions from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Germany, Serbia and Slovenia were invited and presented their educational models in creating an institution that could grant a university degree for police officers.