A Note from the Director
Dear Readers,
It was good to see so many of you at the seminar on religion in Warsaw in April. It proved to
be a most interesting meeting because the level of discussion was so high. The seminar
revealed just how many problems exist all over the OSCE area with regard to practising
religion and to keep this topic alive we are producing a special edition of the Bulletin devoted
to the freedom of religion later this year.
We have another varied edition of the Bulletin for you this quarter. Mr. Bruce George.M.P. a
member of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly has written an interesting and topical article
about NATO and the OSCE with some interesting proposals for closer interaction between the
two bodies.
We are half way into a four part programme of prison training in Georgia in which we are
using the Polish example of the dramatic change in their prison regime as means of effecting
change. Georgian prison officers working alongside their polish counterparts in polish prisons
has proved to be a most useful training. We are also doing work with prisons in other OSCE
states . This is not only because the state of prisons reflects society as Dr. Monika Platek
explains in her article but also because people are dying in prison in some countries due to the
conditions. Dr. Livingstone who attended a workshop on prisons in Yerevan explains the need
for the respect for human rights of prisoners which is so often forgotten.
For the first time we have an article on torture. Although freedom from torture is one of the
basic human rights which is reflected in the OSCE documents, little attention has been paid to
it so far. Dr. Nigel Rodley is an expert in this area being the UN Special Rapporteur on
Torture and has written an article for us.
Last but by no means least we have an article by Yasha Lange of the European Institute of the
Media in Dusseldorf and Elizabeth Fuller about the role of media in the TransCaucasus in
general and particularly in relation to the elections which took place in each of the three
republics . It suggests that the position of the media may indicate the progress which a state is
making to democracy. For this reason among others we have an active media programme in
ODIHR.
Although the ODIHR is much preoccupied with the elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina we will
be carrying on with our other activities as much as we can and hope to see as many of you as
possible during the next few months .
Audrey Glover
Ambassador
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OSCE ODIHR Bulletin Vol. 4 No. 3