PRESS RELEASE : Presentation by Chairs of the Three OSCE Committees – UK response [April 2024]
The press release issued by the Foreign Office on 18 April 2024.
Ambassador Neil Holland thanks the three OSCE Committee chairs for their work to uphold OSCE principles and commitments.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the Chairs of the three Committees for presenting today. Dear Peter, Florian, Anne-Marie: we support the approaches you have proposed. What runs clearly through each is that OSCE Committees strive to uphold the principles and commitments that we have all signed up to as members of this organisation. Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine strikes at the very heart of these commitments and principles. Russia’s war must continue to command our full attention.
Dear Peter, we welcome your appointment and proposed work-plan, particularly your focus on cyber and online activity. 2024 is an important year for democratic institutions and processes. Millions of voters go to the polls in elections, in the UK and elsewhere across our region. This presents a significant opportunity for interference and influence by malign actors. We must be vigilant and increase our awareness of these threats.
Dear Florian, we welcome your continued leadership and work plan, particularly your proposal to hold sessions on food security and connectivity. Instability has a significant detrimental impact on the economies and environment across our region, and the UK values the Economic and Environmental Committee’s flexible approach to respond to new threats on the ground.
Dear Anne-Marie, we welcome your continued leadership and proposed work plan. The UK especially welcomes the work you – with the Chair in forthcoming Supplementary Meetings – continue to lead with civil society. Thematic meetings this year on freedom of the media, torture, and cultural heritage in particular, provide an important platform to review the growing challenges to implementation of our human rights commitments. The UK will continue to work with you, as with the CiO, ODIHR, RFOM and others to defend the OSCE’s vital human dimension commitments and institutions, and to spotlight ways in which internal repression in some participating States has undermined shared security in the OSCE region.
Madam Chair, we need the OSCE now more than ever. Our shared principles and commitments sit at the heart of Euro-Atlantic security, and we will continue to work in the three Committees, with you as our CiO, and the Secretariat, institutions, and field missions – to uphold them. For Ukraine of course, but also for all of us in this room. Thank you.
