News and press releases

A two-day online high-level event focusing on the rights of young people, the Samarkand Forum on Human Rights, was held on 12 and 13 August 2020. The meeting, supported by the OSCE Project Co-Ordinator in Uzbekistan, was attended by representatives of the OSCE Secretariat, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and other OSCE field operations. The event was co-organized with the Government of Uzbekistan represented by the National Human Rights Centre of Uzbekistan, the UN Country Team and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. The Samarkand Forum on Human Rights is the continuation of the Asian Forum which took place in 2018 in Samarkand.

COPENHAGEN, 12 August 2020 – To address challenges such as armed conflicts, climate change, widespread poverty and inequality, it is necessary to actively include youth, as well as women and minorities, in decision-making mechanisms, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President George Tsereteli (Georgia) said Wednesday at the Samarkand Human Rights Web Forum...

VIENNA / TIRANA, 11 August 2020- Ahead of tomorrow’s International Youth Day, the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Special Representative on Youth and Security, Keisi Seferi, said that amid the challenging times of the COVD-19 pandemic, this was an opportune moment to strengthen inclusive youth engagement for global action to the benefit of comprehensive security...

As part of the OSCE Mission to Montenegro’s technical support to the media, the Mission donated seven state-of-the-art mobile journalism sets to the public service broadcaster, Radio Television of Montenegro (RTCG), on 6 August 2020 in Podgorica...

ERGNETI, 30 July 2020- The 96th Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism (IPRM) took place today in Ergneti, co-facilitated by Ambassador Marek Szczygieł, Head of the EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia (EUMM) and Ambassador Rudolf Michalka, Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for the South Caucasus. In the wake of COVID-19, this first regular meeting of the Ergneti IPRM since August 2019 was accompanied by all the necessary precautionary health measures, and was held in a positive and constructive atmosphere...

The OSCE launched a new project on 24 July 2020 aimed at increasing and supporting the participation of women at all levels of policing, with the first pilot activities taking place in Montenegro. The project was developed to raise awareness at policy and police levels about the under-representation of women in the police across the OSCE area...

WARSAW, 25 July 2020 – The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) expresses profound sadness following the death of the human rights defender Azimjan Askarov in prison earlier today. Askarov, a long-standing partner of ODIHR, spent many years prior to his arrest in 2010 documenting police abuse and brutality in his native Kyrgyzstan.