News and press releases

The film That Boy, screened today at the Warsaw Human Dimension Conference, follows the journey of Toby, a former Roma refugee, and Mirek, a former neo-Nazi, as they confront the roots of hate and explore the possibilities of dialogue and reconciliation. It revisits the largely untold story of anti-Roma violence that spread across parts of Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s.

Support for Roma and pro-Roma civil society organizations has shrunk dramatically in recent years, weakening their role in defending rights and holding institutions accountable, participants said at a side event of the Warsaw Human Dimension Conference organized by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).

Hate crimes remain a threat to security and social cohesion, particularly in post-conflict and transitional societies. At a side event of the Warsaw Human Dimension Conference, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and six OSCE field operations marked 15 years of efforts to address this challenge through regional co-operation in South-Eastern Europe.

Hate crimes remain a serious threat to security across the OSCE region, with the potential to escalate into wider conflict and violence. To support states in strengthening their criminal justice response, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) is relaunching its flagship hate crime training programmes for police and prosecutors.

As setbacks to gender equality become more visible across the OSCE region, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) emphasized the crucial role of strong human rights systems in reversing this trend at a side event of the Warsaw Human Dimension Conference.

The sharp rise in the number of war crimes trials being heard by local courts across the OSCE region was the topic of discussion during a side event at the Warsaw Human Dimension Conference entitled “Beyond the Hague: the OSCE and current challenges in securing justice for victims of war crimes”, organized by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, the OSCE Mission in Kosovo, and the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, together with the Ukrainian Legal Advisory Group, a civil society partner from Ukraine.

Monitoring trials is an effective means to safeguard fair trial rights, strengthen accountability and build public confidence in the judiciary, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) underlined at a side event of the Warsaw Human Dimension Conference today.