News and press releases

Representatives of ministries dealing with transport logistics, finance institutions, the State Customs and State Border Services, the Union of Entrepreneurs and Industrialists, and other state bodies participated in an OSCE-organized seminar on facilitating the development of secure national transport and trade infrastructures that took place in Ashgabat on 10 and 11 October 2017...

The SMM recorded more ceasefire violations in Donetsk region and fewer in Luhansk region compared with the previous 24 hours. The SMM followed up on reports of a civilian casualty from Zaitseve. The SMM continued monitoring all three disengagement areas; it recorded ceasefire violations close to the Stanytsia Luhanska and Zolote disengagement areas and saw a white signal flare fired from near a checkpoint south of the Stanytsia Luhanska bridge. Its access remained restricted in all three disengagement areas and elsewhere, including in Vesela Hora and Horlivka.* The Mission saw weapons in violation of withdrawal lines near Zaichenko and Bezimenne. It facilitated and monitored repairs and maintenance of the thermal power plant in Shchastia and power lines near Toretsk. It visited two border areas not under government control...

NICOSIA, 10 October 2017 – Harlem Désir, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, during his visit to Cyprus launched an exchange programme for young journalists from the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities in the next phase of his Office’s "The Cyprus Dialogue” project, which was initiated in March this year...

Measures to enhance the participation of women in public and political life were the main topic of a two-day training course organized for the Municipal Gender Focal Point Network on 9 and 10 October 2017 in Podgorica...

COPENHAGEN, 10 October 2017 – Recognizing the difficulties facing policymakers on issues related to migrants and refugees, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s Ad Hoc Committee on Migration today offered a set of observations and recommendations based on its work over the past year and a half...

WARSAW, 10 October 2017 – The protection of children of those sentenced to death or executed should be strengthened in those OSCE countries that still practice capital punishment, Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir, Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), and Marta Santos Pais, the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children, said today on the occasion of the World Day against the Death Penalty...

Malta’s early parliamentary elections on 3 June 2017 were held in a professional and efficient manner, with electoral stakeholders expressing confidence in most stages of the process, but aspects of the legal framework could benefit from further review, concludes the final report issued by the OSCE