News and press releases

A four-day training programme on the Prevention of Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Heritage (PITCH), organized by the World Customs Organization (WCO) and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) with the support of the Border Management Unit of the OSCE Project Office in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, drew to a close on 29 March 2019.

An OSCE-supported one-day gender assessment workshop focusing on ways to strengthen women’s participation in the parliament took place in Skopje on 2 April 2019.

In order to promote gender equality at the local level, the OSCE Mission to Montenegro, in co-operation with the Ministry for Human and Minority Rights, organized a two-day workshop on gender equality for municipal gender focal points on 28 and 29 March 2019 in Podgorica...

Compared with the previous reporting period, between the evenings of 29 and 30 March, the SMM recorded fewer ceasefire violations in Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Compared with the previous 24 hours, between the evenings of 30 and 31 March, the Mission recorded more ceasefire violations in Donetsk and fewer in Luhansk regions. The SMM followed up on reports of an injured man in Verkhnotoretske. It observed fresh damage near and in residential areas in Dokuchaievsk and Hlybokyi. The Mission saw military presence inside the Petrivske disengagement area and recorded ceasefire violations in the Zolote disengagement area. The SMM observed weapons in violation of the withdrawal lines in government-controlled areas of Donetsk region. Restrictions of the SMM’s access continued in all three disengagement areas. In addition, the Mission was denied access at a checkpoint near Zaichenko.* The SMM observed a calm situation in several regions in Ukraine during the Presidential Elections.

KYIV, 1 April 2019 – Sunday’s presidential election in Ukraine was competitive, voters had a broad choice and turned out in large numbers. While the existing legal framework offers a sound basis for holding democratic elections, it was often not implemented in good faith by many stakeholders in the run-up to election day. This negatively impacted trust in the election administration, the enforcement of campaign finance rules, and the effective resolution of election disputes, the international observers concluded in a preliminary statement released today...

A four-day train-the-trainer course on appropriate and effective responses to gender-based violence for officials from Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania was held from 25 to 29 March 2019, at the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Training (CEPOL) Headquarters in Budapest, Hungary...

The OSCE Programme Office in Dushanbe held the fourth co-ordination meeting dedicated to the implementation of Tajikistan’s 2020 National Strategy and Action Plan on Prevention of Violent Extremism in Dushanbe on 29 March 2019. It was organized together with Tajikistan’s General Prosecutor’s Office.