News and press releases

The OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier, on a visit to Geneva from 18 to 20 January 2012, emphasized the need to further develop partnerships between international organizations in maintaining peace and security and effectively tackling current and emerging threats...

TIRANA, 18 January 2012 – Ahead of the first anniversary of violent demonstrations in Tirana on 21 January, the Head of the OSCE Presence in Albania Ambassador Eugen Wollfarth, the US Ambassador in Tirana Alexander A. Arvizu and the Head of Delegation of the European Union in Tirana Ambassador Ettore Sequi issued the following statement today:

OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier met Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusić in Zagreb on 17 January 2012...

ZAGREB, 17 January 2012 – Today the OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier and Croatian President Ivo Josipović held an official ceremony to mark the closure of the OSCE’s office in Croatia. The closure follows a decision last month by the 56 OSCE participating States that declared the mandate of the office successfully completed...

BISHKEK, 16 January 2012 – The OSCE Academy in Bishkek welcomed its first students in the new Master of Arts in Economic Governance and Development Programme today...

ASTANA, 16 January 2012 – Notwithstanding the government’s stated ambition to strengthen Kazakhstan’s democratic processes and conduct elections in line with international standards, the early parliamentary vote still did not meet fundamental principles of democratic elections, international observers concluded in a statement issued today...

A report released by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) on 12 January 2012 said that, although December’s Russian State Duma elections were technically well-administered, the contest was marked by the convergence of the state and the governing party...

With the beginning of 2012, a new department has been established that will improve the OSCE’s work on combating transnational threats (TNT), OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier announced on 10 January 2012...

The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Dunja Mijatović established a presence of her Office on Facebook...

VIENNA, 12 January 2012 – Today the Irish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Eamon Gilmore addressed the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna for the first time in his role as OSCE Chairperson-in-Office. Deputy Prime Minister Gilmore emphasised the need for the OSCE’s co-operative, inclusive approach in tackling modern security challenges...

OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier met French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé in Paris on 11 January 2012...

VIENNA, 11 January 2012 – The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Dunja Mijatović, condemned today the sentencing of Ales Barazenka, an independent Belarusian cameraman, to 11 days’ imprisonment for "participating in an unsanctioned event"...

WARSAW, 10 January 2012 – On the eve of tomorrow’s tenth anniversary of the transfer of the first detainees to the United States naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Ambassador Janez Lenarčič, the Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), expressed dismay today at the continued practice of indefinite detention without charge or trial of terrorism suspects...

CHISINAU, 5 January 2012 – The Head of the OSCE Mission to Moldova, Ambassador Philip Remler, today expressed his concern at the fatal shooting in the Security Zone of the Transdniestrian conflict on 1 January...

Bulgaria’s presidential and municipal elections in October were generally characterized by a respect for fundamental rights and freedoms, but pervasive allegations of vote-buying underscored the need for continued reform, the final report released by ODIHR on 5 January 2012 concludes...

The OSCE Mission in Kosovo invites civil society organizations in Gjilan/Gnjilane and Prizren regions to submit project proposals on the empowerment of vulnerable groups, public participation in municipal decision making or improving access to municipal services...

The OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Ažubalis, congratulated his successor as OSCE Chairperson, Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Eamon Gilmore today on Ireland taking over the OSCE Chairmanship from 1 January 2012...

DUBLIN, 1 January 2012 – Ireland’s 2012 Chair of the OSCE will seek to address protracted conflicts, promote Internet freedom and strengthen co-operation between the 56 OSCE participating States, said the new Chairperson-in-Office, Irish Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore, today...

VILNIUS, 30 December 2011 – The OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Ažubalis, welcomed the exchange of detainees by the authorities in Tbilisi and Tskhinvali today...

VILNIUS, 29 December 2011 – The OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Ažubalis, welcomed today the agreement by Bosnia and Herzegovina’s politicians to form a new state government...

Meeting with the Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Yury Fedotov, on 22 December 2011 in Vienna, OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier discussed the prospects for closer co-operation to tackle organized crime and drugs trafficking...

VIENNA, 28 December 2011 – The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Dunja Mijatović, expressed concern about a controversial law on television and radio broadcasting adopted today by Kazakhstan’s upper chamber of Parliament...

The OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine (PCU) handed over computers, monitors and docking stations to the country’s Interior Ministry on 27 December 2011...

VIENNA, 27 December 2011 – The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Dunja Mijatović, welcomed today the pardoning of Facebook activist Jabbar Savalan in Azerbaijan...

YEREVAN, 27 December 2011 – Some 60 staff members of the Yerevan municipality and the city’s administrative districts received certificates today for completing a one-week intensive training course on planning and monitoring organized by the OSCE Office in Yerevan...

GANJA, Azerbaijan, 27 December 2011 – The OSCE Office in Baku launched a training session today in Ganja, the second largest city of Azerbaijan, on countering money laundering and financing of terrorism...

VIENNA, 22 December 2011 – The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Dunja Mijatović, expressed concern today over the approval by the lower chamber of France’s Parliament of a draft bill that aims at criminalizing public statements denying genocides...

TIRANA, 22 December 2011- The Head of the OSCE Presence in Albania, Ambassador Eugen Wollfarth, welcomed today the election of the new People’s Advocate (Ombudsman) by the Albanian parliament...

ASHGABAT, 23 December 2011 – Legal experts from the Justice Ministry, the Institute of State and Law and the National Institute of Democracy and Human Rights (NIDHR) under the President of Turkmenistan took part in an OSCE-supported seminar on legislative drafting which concluded in Ashgabat today...

VIENNA, 22 December 2011 – The Lithuanian OSCE Chairmanship and the Irish Chairmanship of the Advisory Committee on Management and Finance welcomed today’s decision by all 56 OSCE participating States to approve the Unified Budget for 2012, amounting to 148,055,400 euros...

The OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine (PCU) launched a public awareness campaign on communicating with public officials on 22 December 2011...

The Moldovan prosecution service is undergoing reform to strengthen its independence and effectiveness. On 16 December 2011 a group of experts from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania shared their experiences with their counterparts at a conference in Chişinău as part of a joint project by the OSCE Mission to Moldova and the Prosecutor General’s Office on support for prosecution service reform and capacity building based on the experience of the Baltic States...

DVANI, 21 December 2011- The 18th IPRM meeting under the Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism took place in Dvani today. The meeting was co-facilitated by the EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia (EUMM) and the OSCE...

The OSCE Presence in Albania provided basic education materials to more than 300 children from the Roma and Egyptian communities in the south-eastern town of Korça...

VIENNA, 21 December 2011 – The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Dunja Mijatović, today welcomed a Constitutional Court decision that declared unconstitutional several key provisions of Hungary’s 2010 media law. At the same time she expressed concern over the silencing of an independent political talk and news radio in Budapest...

WARSAW, 20 December 2011 – Ambassador Janez Lenarčič, the Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), expressed dismay today over the decision of Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Court to uphold the life sentence for prominent human rights defender Azimjan Askarov...

Albania’s Electoral Code provides a thorough technical foundation for democratic elections, according to a Joint Opinion by ODIHR and the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission released on 19 December 2011. However, it says that recent experience in the implementation of the Code since its adoption in 2008 shows that a number of improvements are still required...

Latvia’s early parliamentary elections on 17 September took place in a democratic and pluralistic environment but a significant part of the population continues to face barriers to political participation, the final report released by ODIHR concludes...

Identifying ways to strengthen the independence of Ukraine's judiciary was the focus of a two-day conference co-organized by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) on 20-21 December 2011 in Kyiv...

VIENNA, 20 December 2011 – The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Dunja Mijatović, said she was alarmed by the mass arrests of journalists in Turkey today and called for swift investigations...

A two-day workshop on administrative justice for representatives of Kosovo’s Ministry of Local Government Administration, Ministry of Public Administration, the Association of Kosovo Municipalities, judges and representatives of judicial and civil service training institutions concluded on 16 December 2011 in Prishtinë/Priština...

PODGORICA, 20 December 2011 – Representatives of judicial training institutions from the region met in Podgorica today to discuss how to step up their contribution to achieving justice in war crimes cases by providing effective training to judicial staff involved in such cases...

BISHKEK, 19 December 2011 – Better implementation of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly in Kyrgyzstan was the focus of an OSCE-supported public discussion that took place in Bishkek today among national authorities, international and national experts, as well as civil society and international organizations representatives...

The OSCE Mission in Kosovo supported a ten-day training course on investigative reporting for fifteen TV, radio and print journalists, which concluded on 19 December 2011 in Prishtinë/Priština.

A roundtable meeting held in Kyiv on 19 December 2011 examined the results of a pilot study conducted in Ukraine in 2011 using a new methodology to assess the level of corruption...

BISHKEK, 19 December 2011 – Current and future pan-regional energy projects and their social and environmental management were the focus of a conference held today at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek...

VILNIUS, 18 December 2011 – OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Ažubalis expressed his sadness today at the death of former Czech President Vaclav Havel and paid tribute to his courage and vision for a free Europe...

VILNIUS, 16 December 2011 – OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Ažubalis expressed his concern at the violent clashes in the western Kazakhstan town of Zhanaozen today in which at least 10 people died and others, including several police officers, were injured, and appealed for calm...

PRISHTINË/PRIŠTINA, 16 November 2011 – The OSCE Mission and the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports in Kosovo organized today a conference on youth participation in decision making for youth action councils, municipal staff and civil society representatives...

A graduation ceremony for 35 police officers who attended a two-week training course on crowd and riot control, organized by the OSCE Mission in Kosovo, concluded on 16 December 2011 in Vushtrri/Vučitrn...