Special Representative
To:
PA President
and
PA Secretary General
PC Brief Week 21, 2015
This week, there were a Conference on Enhancing the Efforts in Preventing and Com-
bating Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians, Focusing on Hate Crimes, Ex-
clusion, Marginalization and Denial of Rights, another edition of “Security Days” (“Build-
ing Bridges: Promoting Dialogue to Prevent Radicalization and Violent Extremism”),
meetings of the Permanent Council (PC), the Forum for Security Co-operation (FSC),
the Contact Group with the Asian Partners for Co-operation, the Preparatory Committee
(PrepComm), the Economic and Environmental and the Human Dimension Committees,
a “Roundtable on Gender Responsive Reconciliation in Afghanistan”, as well as many
other informal meetings. Francesco Pagani participated in the South East European
Regional Meeting of Heads of Missions and Institutions.
The Permanent Council did not take decisions. It debated an address by the Minister of
Women’s Affairs of Afghanistan, H.E. Dilbar Nazari and the regular report by the Head
of the OSCE Program Office in Astana (who also reported about the visit by the Chair of
the PA’s Third Committee, Isabel Santos), as well as the usual issues discussed under
“Current Issues”. Again, some participants expressed their frustration about repetitive
debates behind closed doors in which all sides refer to alleged facts, without the OSCE
having the possibility to seriously examine those facts in a methodologically sound
manner. In the case of Ukraine, this is also linked to the many restrictions that the Spe-
cial Monitoring Mission (SMM) is faced with. The debates under “Current Issues” also
included an emotional and highly controversial debate on two topics: the “International
Day against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia”, raised by Canada, and the In-
ternational Day of Families, raised by Russia. This latter debate demonstrated the deep
trenches in the OSCE regarding opinions how OSCE commitments affect fundamental
values and beliefs.
The “Security Days” as well as the Conference on Intolerance against Christians were
interesting from an intellectual point of view and involved an interested public, but did
not result in any practical proposals for active action by the OSCE. Several participants
of the latter made reference to the 2011 Belgrade OSCE PA Resolution on “Combating
Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in the OSCE Area”, especially on the
necessity to assess relevant pieces of legislation in the participating States in the light of
OSCE commitments.
Andreas Nothelle
Ambassador
May 22, 2015