News and press releases

COPENHAGEN, 24 July 2020 – Members of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s elected Bureau today urged the personal attention of the Foreign Ministers of OSCE participating States to address the institutional crisis currently impacting the organization...

COPENHAGEN, 22 July 2020 – With the OSCE’s leaders’ mandates having expired on 18 July due to a failure to reach agreement among governmental representatives in Vienna, a group of current and former leaders of the OSCE’s parliamentary dimension called today for immediate action to ensure that the organization can continue to function.

COPENHAGEN, 16 July 2020 – OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President George Tsereteli has closely followed the situation along the border of Azerbaijan and Armenia and has been in contact this week with the countries’ OSCE PA delegations and relevant international actors. Today, he urged both sides to urgently de-escalate and to engage in “substantive negotiations"...

COPENHAGEN, 16 July 2020 – The leaders of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s Committee on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Questions expressed concern today that Belarus had failed to extend a timely invitation to the OSCE to observe its upcoming presidential election. The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) announced yesterday that the lack of an invitation has prevented ODIHR from observing the election process...

COPENHAGEN, 13 July 2020 – The COVID-19 pandemic, as an unprecedented global crisis that impacts all dimensions of security, has underlined the urgency of addressing long-standing challenges facing the OSCE area, including resolving conflicts, promoting environmental sustainability, managing migration, and ensuring democratic resiliency and social cohesion, a new OSCE Parliamentary Assembly report concludes.

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.