News and press releases

An OSCE-supported online seminar on staying safe in cyberspace, conducted in the Kazakh language, was organized by the OSCE Programme Office in Nur-Sultan on 9 July 2020

The OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Uzbekistan co-hosted two online roundtable discussions on the main priority areas of the State Programme for the year 2020, which is part of the 2017-2021 National Action Strategy. The two events focused on the fields of rule of law and foreign policy, on 7 and 9 July respectively and were organized in co-operation with the Development Strategy Centre.

KYIV, 10 July 2020 – With more than 1,300 ceasefire violations involving the use of weapons that should have been withdrawn in accordance with the Minsk agreements recorded between 4 April and 20 June, the Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitorinig Mission to Ukraine (SMM), Yaşar Halit Çevik, noted that it is the time for the sides to take the appropriate measures to turn their political commitments into deeds.

Summary Compared with the previous reporting period, the SMM recorded fewer ceasefire violations in Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The SMM followed up on reports of a woman who died as a result of shrapnel injuries in Zhovanka, a government-controlled area of Zaitseve, Donetsk region. Members of the

COPENHAGEN, 9 July 2020 – The Vice-Chair of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s human rights committee, Michael Georg Link (Germany), and Secretary General Roberto Montella discussed today with European Parliament member Nacho Sanchez Amor the need for increased efforts by parliaments to combat fake election observation activities. The practice of state authorities and their proxy organizations arranging visits for international actors outside of the institutional international election observation platforms organized under the auspices of the OSCE/ODIHR, OSCE PA, PACE, NATO PA and the European Parliament is a growing challenge, they said...

COPENHAGEN, 9 July 2020 – Responding to reports that executions are set to resume on the federal level in the United States for the first time since 2003, the leaders of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s human rights committee renewed calls for universal abolition of the death penalty. Kyriakos Hadjiyianni (Cyprus), Michael Link (Germany), and Kari Henriksen (Norway), the Chair, Vice-Chair and Rapporteur, respectively, of the General Committee on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Questions, regretted the decision and urged the U.S. government to reconsider.

The OSCE Transnational Threats Department (TNTD), the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities (OCEEA) and the OSCE Mission to Serbia organized a webinar on the exploitation of the COVID-19 pandemic by organized crime groups on 8 July 2020.