News and press releases

COPENHAGEN, 11 September 2014 – The OSCE Chairperson’s Personal Representatives on combating discrimination and promoting tolerance on 10 to 11 September 2014 made their second joint country visit this year to Denmark. The visit is aimed at identifying problems, best practices as well as gaps in policy, activities and legislation, and areas where the OSCE can provide further support...

Some 40 representatives from regional civil society organizations of the South Caucasus and international NGOs took part in a discussion in Tbilisi on 3 and 4 September 2014, organized jointly by the 2014 Swiss OSCE Chairmanship and the Georgian NGO Analytical Center for Interethnic Cooperation and Consultations. The focus of the event was on the prevention of torture, the independence of the judiciary, and the institutional and legal framework to combat discrimination...

A group of some 90 children in the city of Korça, in south-west of Albania took part in interactive and fun activities organized by the OSCE Presence in Albania on 5 August 2014, to help them understand topics such as human rights, tolerance and non-discrimination...

Eighteen highly experienced trainers and police officers from 13 OSCE participating States gathered in Warsaw from 23 to 25 July 2014 as part of a training-of-trainers event, organized by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). The training was provided as part of ODIHR’s Training Against Hate Crimes for Law Enforcement (TAHCLE) programme, and builds on a 2012 event held together with the Association of European Police Colleges in Lyon, and was organized with their support.

WASHINGTON D.C., 24 July 2014 – The OSCE Chairperson’s Personal Representatives on combatting discrimination and promoting tolerance on 21 to 23 July 2014 made their first joint country visit to the United States where they identified problems, best practices as well as gaps in policy, activities and legislation, and areas where the OSCE can provide further support.

WASHINGTON D.C., 22 July, 2014- With reference to demonstrations in many places in the OSCE area, sparked recently by tensions in the Middle East, and in a few cases with manifestations of intolerance, especially of anti-Semitic rhetoric and acts, Rabbi Andrew Baker, Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office on Combating Anti-Semitism, underlined the importance of the Berlin Declaration. This declaration, adopted ten years ago by the participating States of the OSCE, reads: “[We] declare unambiguously that international developments or political issues, including those in Israel or elsewhere in the Middle East never justify anti-Semitism.”

Strategies for combatting and reporting hate crimes were the focus of two training events – one for Italian civil society activists and the other for law enforcement officers – organized by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) in Rome from 30 June to 4 July 2014.