News and press releases

30- this is the number of days civilian, international monitors of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine have been held captive in eastern Ukraine. Although four members of the Donetsk-based team were freed on 26 June, four members of the Luhansk-based monitoring team are still being held. 30- this is the number of days their families, friends and colleagues are waiting for them. We call for their immediate and unconditional release. For updates follow us on Facebook- facebook.com/oscesmmu and Twitter- twitter.com/OSCE_SMM

PODGORICA, 20 June 2014 – The OSCE Mission to Montenegro, strongly condemns the personalized and offensive attacks contained in recent reports by the Informer newspaper against Vanja Calovic, the Executive Director of the Network for Affirmation of the NGO Sector (MANS)...

VIENNA, 24 June 2014 –OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatović today expressed concern about a first ruling in a series of lawsuits in which members of the Slovak judiciary sued a daily newspaper for defamation, and demanded public apologies and high compensation...

The OSCE Mission to Skopje trained some 150 custody officers from the Ministry of Internal Affairs from 27 March to 22 June 2014 on the effective application of the new Law on criminal procedure that came into force in December last year...

COPENHAGEN, 23 June 2014 – A condemnation of Russia’s actions during the ongoing crisis in Ukraine is among more than a dozen supplementary resolutions submitted for parliamentarians to consider at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s Annual Session in Baku, which runs from 28 June to 2 July...

More than 30 experts from the Environment and Water Resources Ministry of Kazakhstan, Aarhus Centres, academia and environmental non-governmental organizations took part in a video-conference on the draft Strategic Plan 2015–2020 for the implementation of the Aarhus Convention in Kazakhstan, on 23 June 2014 in Astana...

The situation across the country was calm, except parts of Donbas where tensions remained. Donetsk city remained calm, with no substantive change to the security situation. The Donetsk team has been missing for 25 and the Luhansk team for 22 days. The SMM Head Office, in co-operation with the Office in Ukraine of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), have organized and have begun to implement a joint training programme of monitors from each of the ten teams on the topic of internally displaced persons (IDPs). The purpose of this UNHCR-facilitated training, carried out over the next three weeks, is to strengthen the capacity of the SMM to monitor and report on the situation regarding IDPs...