Stop the Aggression, End Impunity, Ensure Justice and Accountability, and Launch a Process to Strengthen the OSCE and Reaffirm Strong Commitment to Helsinki Principles

On Wednesday, 30 November 2022 in Łódź Civic Solidarity Platform representatives presented the Conference outcome document, a Declaration to the OSCE Chair-in-Office, Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau and his colleagues H.E. Bujar Osmani, Incoming OSCE Chair-in-Office, Helga Maria Schmid, OSCE Secretary General, Matteo Mecacci, OSCE/ODIHR Director, Teresa Ribeiro, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Margareta Cederfelt, President of OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, Kairat Abdrakhmanov, OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities.

This year's Declaration is entitled “Stop the Aggression, End Impunity, Ensure Justice and Accountability, and Launch a Process to Strengthen the OSCE and Reaffirm Strong Commitment to Helsinki Principles”  lodz_declaration_civil_society_2022.pdf and includes the following sections:

- Solidarity with Ukraine and a Need for Stronger Support
- Ensuring Justice and Closing the Accountability Gap
- Connection between Repression and Aggression. A Need for Effective  
- Instruments of Reaction to Human Dimension Crises
- Other key challenges
- Civil society space
- The Future of the OSCE: A Need for Change

A brief summary of the Declaration:

  • Sadly, the OSCE could not avoid war in Europe. The organization going to have to reform itself. A major factor is strengthening the role of civil society in preventing wars in the 21st century. Because violent conflict is always preceded by the repression of civil society actors. We must observe the restriction of freedom of expression and human and civil rights not only in Russia, but also in countries such as Belarus, Turkey and Azerbaijan.

  • We, therefore, call for an OSCE coordinator for civil society to permanently combine concerns for the protection, strengthening and participation of civil society at the highest level.

  • The democratic member states of the OSCE are required to set up an informal group of friends of civil society. We need strategies to strengthen civil society in the OSCE area as an essential foundation for a peaceful world order. 

  • In the face of the largest land war in Europe since World War II, we demand the establishment of an international tribunal under the roof of the UN, for which Russian war criminals will have to be held accountable.

At the Conference, we have introduced the Declaration and presented it to representatives of the Chairpersonships (present and incoming) and the leadership of OSCE institutions, who then each make short remarks in response.

Civic Solidarity Platform would like to express its sincere gratitude to the Polish OSCE Chairpersonship 2022 for helping us to organize the OSCE Parallel Civil Society Conference 2022. None of this would have been possible without your persistent support. Thank you for your continuous support, advice and guidance.
 

 

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Dear colleagues, partners and friends, Thank you for your support in 2022. Looking back to the challenges of this year, we feel incredibly grateful to work together with CSP member organizations and external partners.

The OSCE Parallel Civil Society Conference 2022 took place on Wednesday, 30 November 2022 in Łódź, on the eve of the OSCE Ministerial Council meeting. As in previous years, the Parallel Conference is organized by the OSCE-wide NGO network, the Civic Solidarity Platform (CSP), with the support of the Polish OSCE Chairpersonship 2022.

The 2021 Index on Torture was measured in seven countries of the OSCE region: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine.