Andreas Accardo (FRA)
Overview by the ODIHR Director
I
am pleased to present ODIHR’s Annual
Report for the year 2008. 2008 was a
challenging year for the OSCE Office for
Democratic Institutions and Human Rights
(ODIHR).
It was overshadowed by the war in Georgia,
the first armed conflict between OSCE participating States since the beginning of the decade
and one of the worst breakdowns of human
4
Annual Report 2008
security in the OSCE region.
At the request of the Finnish OSCE Chairmanship, ODIHR sent an expert team, which
also included representatives of the OSCE
High Commissioner on National Minorities, to
assess the human rights situation in the waraffected areas in the aftermath of the conflict.
Although the assessment team only returned
in mid-November, ODIHR was able to present