Project: Monitoring Serbia’s OSCE Chairmanship
03Dec2014

OSCE Parallel Civil Society Conference 2014 in Basel

OSCE Parallel Civil Society Conference is held in Basel on December 2nd and 3rd, with the participation of different non-governmental organizations from the OSCE area that are committed to human rights protection and promotion. The Conference is organized by the Civic Solidarity Platform, in cooperation with the Swisspeace, and with the support of Swiss OSCE Chairmanship. Such conferences have been organized since 2010 in the countries which hold the OSCE Chairmanship, with the focus on OSCE human dimension and with the endeavor to discuss issues civil society is dealing with, as well as to empower cooperation among civil society and the OSCE members and bodies.

During the Conference the Basel Declaration on rising intolerance, discrimination, and hate crimes was adopted.

Additionally, the process of self-assessment, conducted by Switzerland as the current OSCE chair, was introduced. Likewise, Ambassador Dejan Šahović presented priorities of the forthcoming Serbian Chairmanship, while participation of Minister for Foreign Affairs Ivica Dačić is announced, as well.

During the Conference in Basel the Centre’s President Svetlana Djurdjevic-Lukic will take part in the panel on freedom of speech.

The Public Policy Research Centre is member of the Coalition of Non-Governmental Organizations on Serbia's OSCE. This coalition was created in June 2014. It consists currently of 10 organisations. The goal of the NGO Coalition is to work with the Serbian Chairmanship and OSCE institutions to address OSCE-wide human dimension issues identified as priorities by the incoming Serbian Chairmanship and to use the occasion of the Serbian leadership of the organisation to improve implementation of human dimension commitments inside Serbia. For this goal the Coalition identified a number of human dimension issues in Serbia that cause significant concern among civil society organisations and require considerable progress in the presiding country which should lead others by example. The Coalition hopes that Serbian NGOs will be able to contribute to the process of self-assessment of Serbia’s implementation of its human dimension commitments currently prepared by the incoming Serbian Chairmanship.