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Commission on security and cooperation in Europe

U. S. Helsinki Commission

Mission

We are a US government agency that promotes human rights, military security, and economic cooperation in 57 countries in Europe, Eurasia, and North America. Nine Commissioners are members of the Senate, nine are members of the House of Representatives, and three are executive branch officials.

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Chairman

Senator Roger F. Wicker

Co-Chairman

Representative Christopher H. Smith

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  • Members of European Parliament to Assess Transatlantic Relations at Helsinki Commission Briefing

    WASHINGTON—The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission, today announced the following briefing: TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONS IN FLUX Wednesday, July 18, 2018 10:00 a.m. Hart Senate Office Building Room 216 Live Webcast: www.facebook.com/HelsinkiCommission Following President Trump’s recent trip to Europe, leading European policymakers will address the state of transatlantic relations. Members of the European Parliament will discuss the potential impact of changing U.S. economic and security policies in the region, the future of the EU following Brexit, and the toll that increased migration has taken on European political cohesion. Opening remarks will be provided by Helsinki Commission Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker (MS). The following Members of the European Parliament are scheduled to participate: MEP Nathalie Griesbeck (France), Chair, European Parliament Special Committee on Terrorism; Alliance of Liberals and Democrats MEP Claude Moraes (UK), Chair, European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs; Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats MEP Michal Boni (Poland), European People's Party Additional speakers may be added.  

  • The OSCE and Roma

    Roma are the largest ethnic minority in Europe and are present in most of the participating States of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.  Concentrated in post-communist Central and Southern Europe, the Romani population is estimated at over 12 million in EU countries, with significant numbers in former Soviet republics, the Balkans, and Turkey. Roma have been part of every wave of European immigration to North American since the colonial period.  There may be as many as one million Americans with Romani ancestry. Roma have historically faced persecution in Europe and were the victims of genocide during World War II.  In post-communist countries, Roma suffered disproportionately in the transition from command- to market-economies, in part due to endemic racism and discrimination. Over the past three decades, Helsinki Commissioners have led the effort in Washington to condemn racially motivated violence against Roma, including pogroms, murders, other violent attacks, and police abuse. The Helsinki Commission has also advocated for recognition of the enslavement and genocide of Roma and redress for sterilization without informed consent.  The Commission has addressed race-based expulsion of Roma, the denial of citizenship to Roma after the break-up of federative states, and the consequences of ethnic conflict and war in the Balkans. The Helsinki Commission strongly supported the first international agreement to specially recognize the human rights problems faced by Roma, adopted by OSCE participating States in 1990. Download the full report to learn more. Contributor: Erika Schlager, Counsel for International Law

  • Inside the Turkish Election

    By: Everett Price, Senior Policy Advisor With Contributions from Scott Rauland, Senior State Department Advisor On June 24, Turkey held its first presidential and parliamentary elections since the passage of controversial constitutional amendments last year that began Turkey’s transformation from a parliamentary to a presidential system. The victors in this election are to preside over the transition to this new form of government and begin to shape the operation of its revamped institutions. In accordance with its commitments as a participating State of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Turkey formally invited the OSCE to observe the vote. This invitation paved the way for the OSCE’s first-ever full-scale deployment of election observers to Turkey. Although the OSCE observed previous elections in Turkey—including last year’s constitutional referendum—it had never done so with a full complement of hundreds of short-term observers that deploy all over the country to record their observations on election day. In the absence of short-term observers, OSCE observation missions rely primarily on a smaller cohort of long-term observers who spend as much as a month in the country monitoring every dimension of the campaign period and balloting. (Learn more about OSCE election observation.) Altogether, the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) deployed 22 long-term observers and more than 300 short-term observers to observe the election across the country. Most STOs are drawn from cadres of experienced volunteers offered by individual OSCE participating States. In addition, the parliamentary assemblies of the OSCE (OSCE PA) and Council of Europe (PACE) contributed 72 and 32 members of parliament and parliamentary staff, respectively, to serve as STOs. The U.S. Helsinki Commission regularly participates in OSCE PA election observation missions. What follows is a first-person account from two U.S. Helsinki Commission staff who served as short-term observers during the Turkish elections. These observations are not an authoritative account of the conduct of the Turkish election, however. Readers interested in such an account should review the OSCE’s official statement of preliminary findings and conclusions. In the days before the election, experts from the OSCE’s ODIHR and the OSCE PA organize a series of in-depth briefings in Ankara to acquaint short-term observers with the context and process for the coming vote. In opening these briefings, Mr. Ignacio Sanchez Amor, a Spanish parliamentarian tasked as the special coordinator and leader of the OSCE short-term observer mission, noted numerous ways in which this election was exceptional. Turks would be voting under a nearly two-year-old state of emergency imposed by the government following a failed coup attempt in July 2016. The state of emergency gave Turkish President Erdogan sweeping powers to rule by decree and authorized provincial governors to curtail basic freedoms, such as the freedom of movement and freedom of assembly. Presidential decrees purged tens of thousands of civil servants from their work, shuttered over a hundred news outlets, blocked thousands of websites, and contributed to the arrest of scores of independent journalists, often on dubious national security charges. Sanchez Amor further commented that the transition to a presidential system and the country’s newly-approved election laws made this election especially complex. Most of the constitutional amendments approved in last year’s referendum would take effect after the election. The victorious presidential candidate, for instance, would be the first to assume unprecedented executive powers that international monitors and the chairman of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, Sen. Roger Wicker (MS), criticized as undermining the separation of powers. Likewise, successful parliamentary candidates would take up seats in a somewhat neutered institution that is given no say in ministerial appointments and can be unilaterally dissolved by the president. One of the constitutional amendments abolished a previous prohibition on new electoral laws taking effect less than 12 months before an election. This meant that the June election would be governed by election regulations passed in November and March that President Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) had muscled through parliament without any opposition support. Opposition leaders sharply criticized provisions in the laws that allowed the government to relocate voting locations on security grounds, loosened rules governing the police presence around polling stations, and weakened protections against election fraud by admitting ballots that are missing a required polling station stamp. Sanchez Amor also expressed concern that one of the country’s major presidential candidates had been in pre-trial detention since November 2016 and was being forced to campaign from his jail cell. This treatment of Selahattin Demirtas, the presidential candidate for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), was one of many restrictions severely disadvantaging the HDP. Campaign banners of two opposition parties stretched across a primary avenue in downtown Ankara. The briefings we received from journalists, civil society organizations, and political parties largely focused on concerns that President Erdogan and the AKP enjoyed overwhelming and unfair advantages incompatible with a free and fair democratic process. Independent journalists noted that Turkey is the world’s largest jailer of reporters with approximately 150 behind bars. They further remarked on dramatic changes in Turkey’s media landscape in recent years that had seen nine out of 10 mainstream TV channels, and most of the print media, fall under the ownership of government aligned businessmen. As a result, the ruling party benefited from nearly wall-to-wall positive media coverage. Additionally, under recent legal changes the Supreme Election Board was stripped of its ability to impose penalties on broadcasters for violating regulations that mandate equal election coverage. All opposition parties complained about Turkey’s 10 percent election threshold—the highest in the world—that requires a party to garner 10 percent of the national vote to secure seats in parliament. During this election, they feared that the ruling party would manipulate the vote to deprive the pro-Kudish HDP of a ten percent share, allowing AKP as the likely runner-up in Kurdish-dominated areas to assume the seats forfeited by HDP. This would be the AKP’s quickest route to a commanding majority in the legislature.    Opposition party leaders warned that the government could use a combination of tactics to suppress the vote for HDP, particularly in the Kurdish southeast. The government had already announced that it had invoked its new authorities to relocate and merge nearly a thousand polling stations in the southeast for security reasons, affecting more than 150,000 voters. Election authorities could also use the admission of unstamped ballots to artificially diminish HDP’s share of the vote. In addition, several briefers noted that deadly violence could be used to intimidate voters. Indeed, less than two weeks before the election a campaign-related altercation in the south left three HDP supporters dead, along with the brother of an AKP candidate for parliament. Many briefers noted that the pro-government media had cast the AKP as the victim of the melee, where in reality the fight had been instigated and escalated by the ruling party’s side. The opposition’s indictment of the fairness of the election was met by an AKP-led campaign to smear those who might tarnish perceptions of the credibility of the outcome. The OSCE observation mission was one of the targets of this campaign. The government denied two OSCE PA parliamentarians entry to the country to participate in the election observation mission, citing political opinions they had expressed in the past. A government spokesperson decried the OSCE’s interim report on the election on June 15 as “political.” Additionally, just two days before the election, Turkey’s semi-official news agency published a story citing anonymous security sources that claimed OSCE observers planned to create “chaos” in the country. It was in this climate of heightened mutual suspicion between the ruling party and the opposition, and between the government and the OSCE observation mission, that we deployed to Istanbul to undertake our election day observation. We were assigned to observe the election at precincts in and around Sisli, a mixed-income neighborhood in central Istanbul that historically supports the secular opposition. Each precinct in Turkey contains numerous voting rooms, with a maximum of 400 voters assigned to each. In all we visited nine so-called ballot box committees (BBCs) in five precincts throughout the day. Sisli delivered its largest share of votes (48.7 percent) to Turkey’s leading secular opposition party CHP in the last parliamentary election in November 2015, and overwhelmingly opposed the transformational 2017 constitutional amendments (71.8 percent). Given the district’s political profile, it was unsurprising to find observers from CHP and other secular opposition parties deployed in full force at our first precinct where we observed the opening procedures for the polls. We arrived just before 7:00 a.m. as the ballot box committee (BBC) was assembling to open the sealed election materials and prepare for voting to begin. The seven-person BBC, chaired by a civil servant and composed of bureaucrats and political party representatives, began to count and record the number of ballot envelopes and presidential and parliamentary ballots—a tally that is important for later confirming that no election materials are unaccounted for.  The mood was serious but amiable and cooperative. With a solitary exception, BBC members worked together constructively without so much as a hint of their diverging political loyalties. Soon, an NGO observer (who was accredited as a political party observer, since there is no legal framework for NGO observation) appeared with a tray of traditional Turkish tea for everyone, observers and BBC members alike. (Tea stands were ubiquitous at the entrance to polling stations, fueling weary poll workers throughout the day and contributing to a generally festive atmosphere around the otherwise dreary school buildings.)  Voters congregate outside a polling station in central Istanbul on election day. Over steaming cups of black tea, the poll workers set about the onerous task of applying the BBC’s identifying ink stamp to each of the more than 300 envelopes and presidential and parliamentary ballots—nearly 1,000 stamps in all. Every BBC we visited that morning noted that they had labored well after the polls opened to complete this cumbersome but mandatory and important process. With two of their colleagues still engrossed in stamping and the eight o’clock opening just minutes away, the BBC’s other five members forged ahead with preparations, sealing the clear plastic ballot box with a wax stamp. More or less promptly at eight, the BBC chairwoman announced the opening of the polling station.  An elderly gentleman who had already shuffled through the open doorway before the announcement immediately presented his ID to receive his ballot papers. His punctual appearance quickly revealed the disorganization of this particular BBC, which had failed to organize the somewhat convoluted voting procedure into an orderly workflow.  Voters were to hand over their identification for confirmation against the printed voter rolls and then receive two oversized ballots for president and parliament, one undersized envelope, and a stamp to mark their choices. To cast their ballots, voters entered a curtained booth, marked one choice each for parliament and president, stuffed the large sheets into the small envelope, sealed it with a lick, and emerged to drop the envelope into the ballot box. Before departing, voters returned the stamp back to the BBC, signed the voter roll, and retrieved their identification and any bags or cellphones they left behind with the BBC. Keeping track of identification cards, remembering to provide all four necessary voting materials (two ballots, envelope, and stamp), and managing the coming and going of voters proved difficult for our first BBC. In just the first twenty minutes the chairwoman twice pulled open a voting booth’s privacy curtain to locate a misplaced ID and missing stamp—an act that should rarely—if ever—occur, since it can compromise the secrecy of the vote.  This procedural dysfunction may have slowed the vote and caused undue confusion for voters, but it had negligible if any implications for the outcome of the balloting. Indeed, the majority of other BBCs we visited were capably managed and all demonstrated admirable transparency. In each classroom we visited—and they were all classrooms—the BBC chair graciously welcomed us, answered our questions, and allowed us to review the voting materials. Political party and NGO observers were common and none complained of being restricted in their work on election day. By the end of the day we had grown particularly accustomed to the sight of observers from the HDP party. These observers were almost uniformly impressive, assertive, young, and female. It became clear that what is generally described simply as a “pro-Kurdish party” has developed political purchase far beyond the Kurdish-dominated southeast, attracting many young, progressive Turks concerned with the rights of women and minorities.  Presidential and parliamentary ballots and envelopes prepared for distribution to voters. In our experience, the transparency protected by professional BBCs and capable local observers was only undermined by skittish security services who seemed uneasy about the role of international observers. Under new election laws passed earlier this year, Turkish police were allowed to patrol closer to polling stations and—for the first time—enter voting rooms at the request of any citizen. One instance of police involvement we witnessed was legal and appropriate; in several other cases it appeared to overstep the prescribed bounds. At a polling station we visited in Gultepe, a more conservative neighborhood just outside Sisli, a heated argument erupted over a poll worker who allegedly exceeded his mandate in assisting a confused voter, sparking allegations of election interference. Consistent with their mandate, the police entered on at least three occasions during the prolonged shouting match to respond to the disturbance and to remove unauthorized people who had entered the voting room. These same police entered another time to exercise their prerogative to check our credentials but departed shortly after. As the day wore on, however, our interactions with the police grew more frequent and contentious. At another polling station in Sisli, police greeted us almost immediately upon our arrival and insisted on escorting us throughout the building. When we entered a voting room to conduct our observations, the police followed us in without any discernible invitation and sat down to watch us until we were through.  Arriving at our final polling station of the day, we were stopped at the entrance to have our credentials checked against a screenshot of approved individuals the policeman had received via the encrypted messaging application, WhatsApp. He informed us that several foreigners had been caught “posing as OSCE observers” so they were under orders to apply extra scrutiny. Although we were not on his screenshot, the officer relented after a few minutes’ delay and followed us inside while respecting the rules about entering the voting room. After a short break, we returned to the same polling station to witness the closing and counting procedure, but this time the police refused us entry. They said they had still not been able to find us on their list, despite our accreditation by the Supreme Electoral Board. With the five o’clock closing swiftly approaching, we insisted on the importance of entering before the polls closed. They offered that we could observe the voting room from the hallway, but we were obligated to decline since the OSCE’s methodology requires unfettered access to the polling area. At the last minute, they said we could observe from a designated area inside the room. Once inside the room, it turned out no such area existed and the police displayed no interest in enforcing one. In contravention of the rules, however, they remained standing directly behind us inside the room nearly the entire time. Consistent with OSCE observations across the country, vote counting at our BBC began promptly once the polls closed. In much the same sprit of cooperation we witnessed at the opening in another precinct, the members of this BBC worked smoothly together to perform the critical, final procedures: securing the voting materials and counting and recording the results.  The BBC’s genuine effort to conduct this process fairly and transparently was marred by some critical procedural errors and the persistent presence of the police, which risked undue oversight by the security services of a sensitive political process. Most procedural faults took place early on and introduced avoidable opportunities for mistakes or manipulation.  Rather than count the unused voting materials after the polls closed, for instance, the BBC departed from the prescribed procedure and counted them before the room was open to the public to observe the count. By depriving observers of the opportunity to verify this tally, the BBC undermined a safeguard that confirms the number of votes cast matches exactly the number of voters who participated.  Another significant oversight involved the BBC’s failure to enter crucial figures directly into the official register, known as a “protocol.” By having one member of the committee simply jot down the tallies of voting materials on a scrap piece of paper, the BBC failed to guard against subsequent mistakes in transcription or intentional alterations.  Oddly, the otherwise attentive and assertive political party observers in the room did not raise these issues with the BBC, possibly out of ignorance of the procedures or disinterest in the importance of these steps. They seemed most focused when it came to the centerpiece of the process: the all-important counting and adjudication of ballots.  In this, the BBC acquitted itself quite well—holding up each ballot in full view of all present, loudly announcing the vote, and recording it only once all were satisfied with the chairman’s judgment (i.e. valid, invalid, or blank).  U.S. Helsinki Commission Senior State Department Advisor Scott Rauland reviews voting materials with Ballot Box Committee members. Given the considerable pre-election controversy about the admission of unstamped ballots, it was surprising that no observer raised a question about whether the ballots or envelopes were appropriately imprinted with the BBC’s seal, which was often faint and on the reverse side of the papers. Late on the day of Turkey’s controversial 2017 constitutional referendum, the government unilaterally decided to count unstamped ballots despite the widespread understanding that the stamps protected against fraud. The number of admitted unstamped ballots last year allegedly accounted for the government’s slim margin of victory in that vote. As a result, opposition leaders protested earlier this year when the government used its absolute majority in the parliament to codify the validity of unstamped votes beginning with the 2018 presidential and parliamentary election. This decision created frustrating ambiguity about the need for the elaborate stamping process that tied up BBCs in the morning, sometimes for more than an hour.  The last steps of the vote count turned out to be the most cumbersome. The astonishingly analog voting process created numerous frustrations, significantly delaying delivery of the ballots to the District Electoral Board responsible for tabulating all the votes in Sisli before forwarding them to the Provincial Electoral Board that oversees a third of Istanbul. The chairperson was consumed for almost an hour manually copying detailed voting results onto nearly a dozen copies of the official protocol for distribution to political party representatives and observers. Another time-consuming process involved sealing all the ballots and sensitive voting materials in a cloth sack using twine and a wax seal. All present watched in quiet agony as the chairperson struggled to melt the nub of wax with a lighter, singing his fingers and nearly setting fire to the bag in the process. Out of the 250 votes counted in our BBC, leading opposition presidential candidate Muharram Ince prevailed with 65 percent of the vote and his party, CHP, took 50 percent of the parliamentary ballots. The simultaneous presidential and parliamentary election afforded voters the opportunity to split their votes between the two ballots. Specifically, many analysts speculated that opposition supporters would endorse Ince as the favored presidential candidate while casting a vote for HDP in the parliamentary election to help the party clear the ten percent threshold. The outcome in our BBC seemed to bear this theory out: Ince received 15 percent more support for president than his party did in the parliamentary vote, while HDP’s presidential candidate Demirtas secured only 4 percent in the presidential but his party garnered 24 percent in the parliamentary. Once counting was complete in all the precincts’ voting rooms, members of the BBCs boarded a municipal vehicle with the sealed sacks and official protocols for delivery to the District Electoral Board. Per OSCE instructions, we jumped into a separate vehicle to tail the municipal van through the narrow streets of Istanbul to the DEB to confirm the official results were delivered directly without interference.  A long line of vans packed with other BBCs was in front of the District Electoral Board waiting their turn to offload. When it came our turn I—accompanied by a police escort—followed the voting materials past heavily-armed guards and crowd control fencing into the building. It was a cramped but sprawling high-rise divided into a warren of small, austere rooms. A crush of poll workers pressed into the building’s narrow corridors trying to reach their designated room. In each room were half a dozen election workers waiting to receive election materials from every corner of the district, double-check the calculations in the protocol, and forward the results for district-level tabulation.  After verifying the secure delivery of our BBC’s materials, I sought to follow the process a step further. Instead, I was offered a meeting with the judge who chairs Sisli’s electoral board.  Supporters of President Erdogan and AKP celebrate their election victory in Taksim Square. It was now well past 9:00 p.m., more than four hours since the polls closed. The judge sat in his office watching two sets of election returns roll in: semi-official results were being broadcast via cable news on a large television across the room while a map on his computer screen that read “Supreme Election Board” was being populated with the official numbers. Although it was impossible for me to tell what discrepancy might have existed between the figures at that moment, opposition leaders were simultaneously turning to social media to reassure their supporters that pro-government media were broadcasting premature results to discourage them. These hopeful claims appear to have been inspired more by optimism than reality—the official results released the next day differed little from what the media was reporting in the evening. At least in central Istanbul, the election results at that time of night were still in the early stages of being compiled at the district level. The judge explained how in the coming hours the district’s protocols would be digitized, loaded onto a public website, and used to generate a district-level protocol of official election results. As chairman, his role would be to adjudicate disputes and discrepancies in the tabulation and certify the final results. Satisfied that I had followed the process as far as I could, our observation ended.  Around 10:00 p.m., President Erdogan declared victory. With 52.6 percent of the vote, he had won outright in the presidential election, avoiding a runoff with the leading secular opposition candidate by a comfortable margin. In parliament, AKP fell just short of an absolute majority for only the second time in its 16 years in power. The AKP’s election coalition partner, the nationalist MHP party, surprised many with its strong performance, earning 49 seats in the 600-seat parliament and easily supplying the six seats AKP needs to reach 301 votes in the legislature. Importantly, HDP cleared the ten percent threshold and will be the third-largest party in parliament with 67 seats behind CHP’s 146. Altogether, an impressive 86.2 percent of the population had participated in the vote. Over a late night dinner in a gentrifying secular neighborhood of Istanbul, I could hear some nearby diners discussing the election results with resignation over glasses of wine. Further off in the distance, the blaring of car horns announced the beginning of celebrations by the President’s supporters. I followed lines of cars festooned with Turkish flags and AKP banners as they streamed toward centrally-located Taksim Square. There, a spontaneous victory party had broken out. A jubilant AKP loyalist was being carried aloft, leading the gathering crowd in chants of “Allahu Akbar!” and “Recep Tayyip Erdogan!”  The evening stroll between these two contrasting scenes was a journey across a wide social and political chasm in Turkey—a chasm the president may choose to widen or narrow in his new mandate. Recent studies have revealed acute polarization within Turkish society that reflects high levels of social distrust and political intolerance. These ills present critical challenges for governance. During the campaign, President Erdogan pledged to lift the nearly two-year-old state of emergency upon his reelection. AKP statements since the election suggest that Erdogan may decline to renew the state of emergency when it expires on July 18. This would be an appropriate first step toward rebuilding trust and one the U.S. Helsinki Commission called for in an October 2017 letter to President Erdogan. But lifting the state of emergency might only be a superficial gesture if it is not accompanied by significant prisoner releases and amnesties—particularly for human rights defenders and journalists—as well as meaningful judicial reform to restore the credibility and independence of Turkey’s politicized justice system. In accordance with its mandate, the U.S. Helsinki Commission will continue to monitor Turkey’s implementation of its commitments as an OSCE participating State to respect human rights and democratic principles. In this most recent election the Turkish people demonstrated formidable levels of political participation and civic engagement. Now and in the future, the government must succeed where it has recently failed to ensure that all its citizens have an opportunity to participate in Turkish society and institutions on the basis of fundamental equality.   The morning after the election, a woman crosses Taksim Square.

  • Helsinki Commission Hearing to Assess Russia’s Decade-Long Occupation of Georgia

    WASHINGTON—The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission, today announced the following hearing: RUSSIA’S OCCUPATION OF GEORGIA AND THE EROSION OF THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER Tuesday, July 17, 2018 11:00 a.m. Dirksen Senate Office Building Room 124 Live Webcast: http://www.senate.gov/isvp/?type=live&comm=csce&filename=csce071718 In 2008—just months after a NATO summit in Bucharest where Georgia and Ukraine failed to secure a concrete roadmap to membership despite U.S. support—Russia invaded Georgia and seized South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Today, Russia’s occupation of one-fifth of Georgia’s sovereign territory remains a critical threat to U.S. interests and international security. Moscow’s invasion of Georgia demonstrated the Kremlin’s willingness to use military force to unilaterally re-draw European borders and challenge the right of its neighbors to choose their own futures. The war in Georgia set the stage for Vladimir Putin’s subsequent war in Ukraine, including the illegal occupation of Crimea and the Donbas and the attempted annexation of Crimea. The human costs of the Russian occupation of Georgia have been tragic. Tens of thousands of Georgians remain internally displaced and face arbitrary detention, mistreatment, and even death if they attempt to visit their property and communities across the Russian-imposed internal administrative boundary. De facto authorities have also worked to eliminate Georgian language and culture from South Ossetia and Abkhazia.  Ten years after the invasion and the fateful 2008 NATO Bucharest Summit, the Helsinki Commission will convene expert witnesses to assess the present state of the conflict and its implications for U.S. interests and international security. The hearing will explore the continued costs of the occupation, as well as steps U.S. policymakers can take to restore Georgia’s territorial integrity and advance its full integration into the Euro-Atlantic community. Witnesses scheduled to testify include: His Excellency David Bakradze, Ambassador of Georgia to the United States Luke Coffey, Director of the Allison Center for Foreign Policy, Heritage Foundation Damon Wilson, Executive Vice President, Atlantic Council  

  • Strengthening Our Democracies Through Inclusive Leadership: Transatlantic Inclusive Leaders Network Workshop 2018

    By Dr. Mischa Thompson, Senior Policy Advisor “I am proud of my country and the human rights and values it stands for. I fight so that these values can be for all.” – Anina Ciuciu, France’s first Romani Candidate for Senate, TILN 2018 From March 4-10, 2018, 32 young leaders representing 26 countries across Europe and the United States participated in the seventh annual Transatlantic Inclusion Leaders Network (TILN) workshop held in Brussels, Belgium.  Hosted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) in partnership with the U.S. Helsinki Commission, U.S. State Department, and other stakeholders, TILN brought leaders together to learn from one another, expand their leadership skills, and offer a more inclusive vision for the world. As part of the workshop, TILN leaders joined the German Marshall Fund’s Brussels Forum Young Professionals Summit and engaged with senior officials of the U.S. and European public and private sector on issues ranging from tariffs and trade to Russia and counterterrorism.  The 2018 cohort focused on strategies to strengthen democracies amid increasing political polarization and to maintain a strong voice during times of transition.  As elected officials and civil society leaders under the age of 35, TILN participants stressed the importance of creating spaces for constructive dialogue and exchange across generations, political parties, and diverse sectors of society as key to a prosperous transatlantic future.   In the weeks following the workshop, previous TILN alumni led projects in Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and Bosnia. These initiatives focused on developing national networks of young leaders to encourage more inclusive decision-making in increasingly diverse populations. The Transatlantic Inclusion Leaders Network (TILN) “inspires, informs, and connects diverse young leaders to excel in elected office and other leadership roles, advance inclusive policies, and engage with transatlantic policymakers.” Participants are from diverse U.S. and European communities, including the Balkans, with a proven commitment to advancing diversity and inclusion best practices in their policymaking and society. For more information on TILN, please see the Transatlantic Inclusion Leaders Network 2018 Workshop Report. TILN 2018 Participants Raumesh Akbari | United States | Representative, State of Tennessee General Assembly András Büchler | Hungary | Head of Public Relations, Libri Publishing Group René Gögge | Germany | Member of State Parliament, Hamburg Abderrahmane Amajou | Italy | Coordinator, Slow Food International Godfrey Chimbganda | Ireland | Chairman, Youth Platform Project Ireland Natalia Sofia Guala Beathyate | Spain | International Programs Officer, Spanish National Organization of the Blind (ONCE) Eugen Balin | Germany | Attorney, Anwaltskanzlei Balin Legal Anina Ciuciu | France | Board Member, La Voix des Rroms Saida Hamouyehy | Italy | Communication Manager, Convergence Onlus Abdelkarim Bellafkih | Belgium | President, Federation of Moroccan Organizations Dave Ensberg | Netherlands | Chairman of the Executive Board, Foundation Biezonderwijs Danjel Hyseni | Albania | Youth Coordinator/Policy Advisor, Roma Active Albania Wesley Bellamy | United States | Council Member, City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia Alisa Flemming | United Kingdom | Councillor, Croydon Borough Council Filiz Keküllüoglu | Germany | Policy Officer & Head of Division of Integration, Senate Department for Education, Youth and Family in Berlin Davit Khazhakyan | Armenia | Member of City Council, Municipality of Yerevan Eduard Mihalas | Moldova | Program Analyst on Population and Development, United Nations Population Fund Pazilaiti Simayijiang | Finland | Vice Chair, Finish Feminist Party Elvira Kovács | Serbia | Member of Parliament, National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia Vasilena Mitsiadi | Greece | Mechanical Engineer, Municipality of Trikala Yasmine Taeb | United States | Legislative Director for Human Rights & Civil Liberties, Friends Committee on National Legislation; Committeewoman, Democratic National Committee Asllan Llunji | Montenegro | Advisor to the Mayor, Municipality of Ulcinj Branislav Nesovic | Kosovo | Associate Political Affairs Officer, United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo Rebecca ThompsonUnited StatesVice President, Deliver Strategies Nvard Margaryan | Armenia | President, PINK Armenia Ruslana Panukhnyk | Ukraine | Executive Director, KyivPride Robert Uribe | United States | Mayor of Douglas, Arizona Maryam Mejdi | France | Financial Analyst, Meridiam Sanaa Saitouli | France | Deputy Mayor of Cergy Sarah Whitehead | United Kingdom | Founder & Director, Community Pride CIC Tarik Mete | Austria | Deputy Head of Department, Social Insurance Institution of Salzburg Antonín Seidel | Czech Republic | City Counselor, Kralupy nad Vltavou

  • Press Conference Following U.S. Congressional Delegation Meetings in Bosnia

    Thank you Madam Ambassador.  We appreciate it very, very much.  And this is indeed a bicameral and bipartisan delegation of members of the United States Congress and I am pleased to be here in Sarajevo for my fifth visit.  This is a nine-member congressional delegation. It represents – as the Ambassador said – the bicameral U.S. Helsinki Commission, of which I’m privileged to serve as chair.  The Helsinki Commission and its members from the United States Congress have always cared about Bosnia and Herzegovina.  Its first congressional visit here was in early 1991, before the conflict began.  Commissioners returned when they could during the conflict, and have come back on several occasions after the conflict to assess and encourage recovery and reconciliation.   This time, we come here first and foremost to let both the political leaders and the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina know the United States remains interested and engaged in the Balkans.  The progress we want to see throughout the region must include progress here in Bosnia.  We are committed to protecting the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in line with the 1995 Dayton Agreement, and we support Bosnia’s aspirations for European and Euro-Atlantic integration.  Efforts to undermine state institutions, along with calls for secession or establishment of a third entity, violate the spirit and letter of the Dayton Accords and endanger the stability of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the entire region, and they diminish the likelihood of progress for local families and job creators.   We encourage the Bosnian government to undertake the necessary reforms to make integration a reality.  The inability to make Bosnia’s government more functional, efficient, and accountable is holding this country back.  It is the consensus of the international community that the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina are ill-served by their government’s structure. Bosnia should correct one glaring shortcoming.  The discriminatory ethnic criteria that prevent some Roma, Jewish, Serbs in the Federation, Croats and Bosniaks in the Republika Srpska, and other citizens who do not self-identify with a group from seeking certain public offices is unacceptable and can easily be addressed.  Bosnia’s neighbors are making progress, and we do not want to see this country fall further behind.   In our meeting with Members of the Bosnian Presidency, we expressed our frustrations with the political impasse and often dangerous rhetoric.  We urged stronger leadership and a more cooperative spirit in moving this country forward, together.  This should include electoral reform now and a serious commitment to the additional reforms that are obviously needed in the near future.  We are tired of the way ethnic politics dominates debate and makes decision-making such a difficult progress.  We share this impatience with our allies and the people this country would like to move closer toward.  This does not enhance the future of young people who want to stay and raise families in Bosnia, and it places a drag on efforts toward Euro-Atlantic integration. We encouraged international mission heads and the diplomatic community based here in Bosnia to defend human rights, democracy, the rule of law and all principles of the Helsinki Final Act in their important work.  In these areas, there should be no compromises here in Bosnia that we would not accept elsewhere.  Working together, the United States and Europe must deal firmly with those who seek to undermine those principles in any way, and that should include – for the worst offenders – coordinated sanctions on their ability to travel and on their individual assets.  We also need to work with Bosnian officials to counter external forces that actively seek to make Bosnia even more vulnerable to internal instability than it already is right now.  We are proud of the work between the United States and Bosnian officials thus far on countering terrorism.  We hope Bosnia remains committed to prosecuting and rehabilitating foreign terrorist fighters through ensuring longer sentences for convicted terrorists. Second to sending a strong U.S. message, we come to hear the voices of the people.  The Helsinki Commission and members of Congress regularly meet with diplomats and senior officials from Bosnia who visit Washington.  Their views are important, and we have good discussions, and we had good discussions this time.  However, we often wonder what the people of Bosnia truly think about their situation.  To that end, we met here with citizens who continue to be denied their recognized right to seek certain public offices.  We also heard the many concerns of non-governmental representatives.  In Mostar, we met with a young leader whose organization is trying to find common ground among the people of that spectacular city, which is still divided in too many ways.  It is deplorable that the citizens of Mostar have been denied their right to vote in local elections since 2008; we call on Bosnia’s political leaders to set aside the differences and work toward a compromise that resolves the impasse. We encourage all citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina to give priority not to protecting ethnic privileges that keep them segregated from one another, but to promoting policies that will give them jobs, greater opportunity, a 21st century education, and the prosperity they want for their children and grandchildren.  To succeed, Bosnian citizens must all move forward together.   However, ethnic divisions continue to thwart needed cooperation.  We sense that these divisions are not as deep as claimed by the political leaders who exploit them. They exploit them for power, in our judgment.  And if there is one thing which should unite all Bosnians, it should be the desire to end the rampant corruption that robs this country of its wealth and potential. We hope that the upcoming Bosnian elections are not only conducted smoothly and peacefully, but their results reflect the genuine will of the people.  Democracy is strengthened when voters cast their ballots based, not on fear, pressure or expectation, but based on their own, personal views regarding the issues and opinions of the candidates, their views and their character.  The outcome must accurately capture these individual sentiments.  We hope for progress on electoral reform, in line with accepted norms for free and fair elections, so that election results can be implemented and a government formed.  We are dismayed at the lack of political diversity within some of the main ethnic groups in this country, and take issue with those who argue they are entitled to a monopoly in representing those groups. A third and final reason this delegation has come to Bosnia and Herzegovina is to remember —as American citizens and elected officials — why the United States of America should continue to care about Bosnia and Herzegovina, even when so many other crises demand attention.  We are reminded, in that regard, of the upcoming anniversary of the genocide at Srebrenica and the unimaginable pain and loss that lingers from that and other wartime atrocities.  Some of us visited the War Childhood museum, reminding us as well of the innocence and vulnerability of civilian victims.  We also remember past U.S. leadership in responding to the conflict.  The address of this building is “1 Robert C. Frasure Street,” after one of three American envoys who lost their lives on nearby Mount Igman while seeking to bring peace to this country.  Their work, and that of so many other American diplomats, soldiers and citizens who have continued their work to this day, cannot be left unfinished.   Finally, we also witnessed the incredible beauty of the countryside, the vibrancy of places like Sarajevo and Mostar, and the generous hospitality of the people.  Having been through so much, they deserve better than they have right now.            We therefore leave here more committed than ever to this country’s future, and as confident as ever in our ability to work together to build that future.  We support Ambassador Cormack here in Sarajevo and will continue to encourage our government in Washington to take further steps to encourage the good governance and prosperity that the citizens of this country deserve.

  • Annual Trafficking in Persons Report: Europe Falling Behind on Trafficking Victim Identification

    WASHINGTON—Last week, the U.S. Department of State released the 18th annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, which tracks the progress of 189 countries toward meeting minimum standards of prosecution, protection, and prevention in the fight against human trafficking.  This year’s report showed a 45 percent increase in trafficking victim identification worldwide in 2017 to 100,409—an all-time high for both labor and sex trafficking. However, while more labor trafficking victims were identified in Europe than in 2016, overall victim identification in Europe dropped 4 percent. Helsinki Commission Co-Chairman Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-04), who also serves as the Special Representative for Human Trafficking Issues to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, said, “With the current migrant crisis, it is more important than ever that OSCE participating States in Europe are informed and on the lookout for human trafficking victims, and have care available for them when they are found.  Unaccompanied minors, in particular, are vulnerable to trafficking and re-trafficking all along the migration routes.” Helsinki Commission Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker (MS) welcomed the report and noted that despite the downturn in victim identification in Europe, several OSCE participating States have made substantial progress in fighting human trafficking. “Estonia, Cyprus, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldova, and Uzbekistan are to be congratulated for their efforts to meet the minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking,” he said.  Ireland and Armenia, however, moved down from Tier 1 to Tier 2.  Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Mongolia moved from Tier 2 to the Tier 2 Watch List.  The TIP Report classifies countries into several tiers based on their progress toward meeting minimum standards to combat human trafficking. Tier 1 countries fully meet the minimum standards. Tier 2 countries do not meet the minimum standards but are making a significant effort to do so. Tier 2 Watch List countries are in a grace period and are in real danger of becoming Tier 3 if they do not take concrete action to improve their efforts. Tier 3 countries do not meet the minimum standards and are not making significant effort to do so. Tier 3 countries may be subject to U.S. sanctions. Since the creation of the annual TIP Report by Co-Chairman Smith’s Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, more than 120 countries have enacted anti-trafficking laws and many countries have taken other steps to significantly raise their tier rankings—citing the TIP Report as a key factor in their new anti-trafficking efforts. 

  • Parliamentary Diplomacy

    The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (OSCE PA) was established in 1991 to offer opportunities for engagement between parliamentarians from OSCE participating States. The Helsinki Commission has become central to the organization of bicameral U.S. delegations to OSCE PA annual sessions and other meetings, and provides for substantial interaction between Commission staff and the Assembly’s secretariat on issues of common concern.  U.S. objectives and interests in the OSCE region are advanced through the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in the following ways: Engagement With 17 of 323 seats, the United States has the largest representation in the Assembly.  Even when actual delegations are smaller, the active yet measured involvement of Members of Congress in debates and dialogue assures all other states – including not only allies and friends but those with which there is a more adversarial relationship – of a strong U.S. commitment to security in the OSCE region. This engagement was perhaps best exemplified when Washington, DC, hosted the 2005 OSCE PA annual session.            Service Members of the U.S. Congress have consistently held leadership positions in the Assembly since its inception.  Senator Roger Wicker currently serves as an OSCE Vice-President, and chaired the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's Committee on Political Affairs and Security Committee from 2014 to 2017. In addition, Representative Christopher Smith is the current Special Representative to the OSCE PA President on Human Trafficking Issues and Senator Benjamin Cardin serves as the Special Representative on Anti-Semitism, Racism, and Intolerance. Representative Richard Hudson is a vice-chair of Ad Hoc Committee on Countering Terrorism, and Representative Sheila Jackson Lee serves on the Ad Hoc Committee on Migration. In the past, Representative Alcee Hastings served as a committee officer, as President of the Assembly from 2004 to 2006, and for many years was the OSCE PA Special Representative on Mediterranean Issues Affairs. Senator Benjamin Cardin and Representatives Steny Hoyer and Robert Aderholt have all served as committee officers as well as Vice Presidents of the Assembly, and former Representative Hilda Solis served as a committee officer while in Congress. Advocacy U.S. Delegations have found the OSCE PA to be a useful venue for introducing new issues and concerns that ultimately need to be addressed by the OSCE itself in Vienna.  Efforts to combat trafficking in persons or to respond to anti-Semitism, racism and other forms of intolerance in society became central to the OSCE’s work as a result of initiatives coming from the Parliamentary Assembly.  The Assembly also encourages the OSCE to further develop its partnerships with Mediterranean and Asian states.  While the OSCE operates on the basis of consensus decision-making, meaning just one of the 57 participating States can block a decision, the OSCE PA operates on majority voting, allowing for adoption of resolutions on more challenging and sometimes controversial issues that need to be confronted directly. Responsiveness Central to OSCE diplomacy is the notion that respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms is part of a comprehensive definition of security, and that raising concern about violations of these rights and freedoms in other states does not constitute interference in the internal affairs of that state. Still, many states resist discussion of their human rights performance. The United States has generally been more responsive to the concerns raised about its record, including the conduct of elections, use of the death penalty or treatment of Guantanamo Bay detainees.  Both diplomatic and congressional representatives have accepted legitimate concerns raised, even if the motivation appears to be less than genuine, clarified the picture when necessary and acknowledged shortcomings that do exist. Members of the U.S. Congress, however, have the additional ability to speak their own minds on these issues, rather than reflect official policy.  The diversity of opinion expressed by Members of the U.S. Congress is lacking in many other parliaments and therefore sets an example for others hopefully to emulate.  Field Activity The Helsinki Commission has observed scores of elections in other OSCE participating States ever since contested elections first occurred in the formerly one-party communist states of Eastern Europe and then-republics of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s. For most of that time, including today, the observation missions of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly represent the most effective way to deploy Commissioners and Commission staff to observe elections in order to encourage their free and fair conduct.

  • Chairman Wicker Introduces Resolution Emphasizing Importance of NATO to Regional Security

    WASHINGTON—Helsinki Commission Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker (MS) introduced a bipartisan resolution (S.Res.557) emphasizing the importance of NATO to the collective security of the transatlantic region and urging its member states to work together to strengthen the alliance at the July 11-12 NATO summit in Brussels.  “NATO remains the cornerstone of transatlantic and global security. This resolution underlines the need for our allies to boost their contributions to our collective defense. It also encourages practical steps at the upcoming NATO summit to bolster the alliance’s effectiveness against current and emerging threats,” said Chairman Wicker. “We must always work to strengthen the alliance if we want it to serve our collective security as well as it has in its first seven decades.”  Sen. Ben Cardin (MD), a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and ranking Senate commissioner, is the lead co-sponsor of the resolution. Other original co-sponsors of S.Res.557 include Helsinki Commissioners Sen. Thom Tillis (NC) and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (NH), who also co-chair the Senate NATO Observer Group. “NATO summits are important occasions to send messages of solidarity with our NATO allies and reaffirm our continued commitment to transatlantic principles, including democracy and the rule of law,” said Sen. Cardin. “This resolution underlines that NATO is rooted in a foundation of shared values, and that any backsliding on individual liberty, corruption, or human rights risks eroding that foundation.” S.Res.557 reaffirms the enduring commitment of the United States to NATO’s collective defense, enshrined in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, and urges all NATO member states to be prepared to meet their respective Article 5 obligations.  It also pledges support for measures to deter Russian aggression against the territory of any NATO ally. The resolution underlines the need for NATO’s “open door policy” to remain in effect and for the alliance to extend an invitation to any aspirant country that has met the conditions required to join NATO. Finally, it urges leaders at the Brussels summit to ensure the alliance makes key changes to meet urgent security threats and counter new challenges. “As I stated when we re-established the NATO Observer Group, our alliance must be prepared to face a broad range of threats, including hybrid and cyber threats from Russia and other adversaries,” said Sen. Tillis. “A strong and committed NATO alliance remains vital as our community of democracies continues to expand and thrive.” “This resolution underscores the need for the United States to work closely with our allies to modernize NATO to respond to the ever-evolving threats facing western democracies, particularly from the Kremlin,” said Sen. Shaheen. “Continued cooperation with NATO allies will be integral to our efforts to safeguard our country’s national security and protect the United States.”

  • Chairman Wicker Welcomes Nomination of Robert Destro for Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

    WASHINGTON—Helsinki Commission Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker (MS) today welcomed the nomination of Robert A. Destro to serve as the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. The Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor traditionally also serves as the State Department’s representative on the Helsinki Commission. “For more than 40 years, the bipartisan, bicameral Helsinki Commission has demonstrated the deep commitment of the U.S. Congress to robust American leadership on human rights and democracy. By nominating Mr. Destro, President Trump has taken a decisive step to ensure that the critical work of the State Department will keep pace with the challenges we are currently facing,” said Sen. Wicker. “I encourage my Senate colleagues to quickly confirm Mr. Destro, given the many human rights challenges we are seeing worldwide.” “Following his confirmation, I also look forward to welcoming Mr. Destro to the Helsinki Commission. By serving together as commissioners, members of Congress and senior administration officials more effectively advance U.S. policies that promote security, human rights, and fundamental freedoms around the globe,” Sen. Wicker concluded. Mr. Destro is a human rights advocate and a civil rights attorney with expertise in elections and employment law. He is also professor of law and director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at The Catholic University of America.

  • Roundtable on Illicit Trade

    Illicit trade—the transnational smuggling of illegal goods—has grown dramatically in the era of globalization thanks to modern technology, free trade zones, and the absence of the rule of law in many countries. Today, the shadow economy is booming and is estimated to account for up to 8 to 15 percent of world GDP. This roundtable brought U.S. government officials together with representatives of companies, associations, and organizations working to combat illicit trade. Participants discussed policy responses to the growing threat of illicit trade and how to build effective public-private partnerships. Officials from the intelligence community, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of State discussed their agencies’ roles in the struggle to stem the tide of illicit trade. Click here to see the full list of participants.

  • Chairman Wicker, Ranking Senator Cardin Urge President Trump to Call on President Putin to Free Oleg Sentsov

    WASHINGTON—In a letter on Friday, Helsinki Commission Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker (MS) and Ranking Commissioner Sen. Ben Cardin (MD) urged President Trump to call on Russian President Vladimir Putin to free Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov from his unjust imprisonment. On May 14, 2018, Sentsov began a hunger strike, which he plans to continue until all Ukrainian political prisoners jailed in Russia are released. The letter reads in part: “Oleg Sentsov has been a prisoner of conscience in Russia for more than four years. In May 2014, he was detained in his native Crimea, then illegally occupied by Russia, and brought to Moscow on unsubstantiated allegations of terrorism. Numerous governments and human rights organizations have dismissed these allegations as politically-charged, groundless fabrications orchestrated in retaliation for Sentsov’s outspoken criticism of Russia’s occupation of Crimea and his efforts to document human rights abuses there… “As Russia hosts the World Cup in the coming weeks, the eyes of the world will be on the country. In the spirit of this unifying global event, we urge you to raise with President Putin the international approbation which Oleg Sentsov’s immediate release would provide for him. Your advocacy on behalf of this brave Ukrainian patriot will be an important demonstration of U.S. human rights leadership around the world.” In April 2017, the U.S. Helsinki Commission held a briefing focusing on Russia’s human rights violations against Ukrainian citizens, including Sentsov. The full text of the letter can be found below: The Honorable Donald J. Trump President of the United States The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, We hope you will call on Russian President Vladimir Putin immediately and unconditionally to release the Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov from his unjust imprisonment in Siberia. In light of Sentsov’s hunger strike, our request is urgent. Oleg Sentsov has been a prisoner of conscience in Russia for more than four years.  In May 2014, he was detained in his native Crimea, then illegally occupied by Russia, and brought to Moscow on unsubstantiated allegations of terrorism. Numerous governments and human rights organizations have dismissed these allegations as politically-charged, groundless fabrications orchestrated in retaliation for Sentsov’s outspoken criticism of Russia’s occupation of Crimea and his efforts to document human rights abuses there. On May 14, 2018, Mr. Sentsov declared he had begun an indefinite hunger strike, stating that “the one and only condition for its termination is the release of all Ukrainian political prisoners that are currently present on the territory of the Russian Federation.” With his health already weakened, it is uncertain how long he can survive. As Russia hosts the World Cup in the coming weeks, the eyes of the world will be on the country.  In the spirit of this unifying global event, we urge you to raise with President Putin the international approbation which Oleg Sentsov’s immediate release would provide for him.  Your advocacy on behalf of this brave Ukrainian patriot will be an important demonstration of U.S. human rights leadership around the world. Sincerely,

  • High Crimes and Pipelines

    Corruption continues to plague Ukraine’s energy sector. Despite the success of reforms to its state-owned gas company, Naftogaz, rampant corruption in regional distribution companies and elsewhere prevents Ukraine’s energy sector from realizing its potential. Coupled with the Russian assault on energy security in the form of Nord Stream 2, Ukraine finds itself at a crossroads: will it continue on the reformist path toward energy independence, or will its energy sector once again become defined by corruption? This briefing reviewed the challenges facing Ukraine’s energy sector with a focus on corruption’s role in preventing necessary reforms. Speakers provided expertise and insight as to how Ukraine’s energy sector fits into the larger picture of Ukraine’s fight against corruption. They also examined Russia’s malign influence in the country. Finally, the briefing offered policy responses to these issues.

  • Reality vs. Rhetoric

     Since President Trump’s inauguration, the administration’s Russia policy has been divided between rhetoric and reality. Two dueling narratives have emerged—one based on the conciliatory nature of the president’s words and tweets, the other arising from the hawkishness of implemented policy. The disparity has rendered difficult any objective assessment of administration policy toward Moscow.  During this briefing, the panelists examined this divergence and sought to contextualize the administration’s policy while providing recommendations for future action. According to the panelists, while rhetoric is undoubtedly important, for analysis it is far more useful to look to reality. In that regard, the Trump administration’s policy has been “the toughest since the Cold War.” This policy has taken two principal forms: increased military deterrence and an expanded sanctions regime. Militarily, the administration has instituted a tactical deterrence strategy that may serve as the foundation for a larger strategy of containment. Since 2017, the administration has initiated the sale of lethal arms to Ukraine, conducted air strikes against the Syrian regime and Russian private military contractors operating in Syria, increased funding in the NDAA for the European Deterrence Initiative from $3.7 billion to $6.3 billion, and enhanced the U.S. presence in Eastern Europe by expanding the size, scope, and frequency of allied training exercises in the region. The administration has supported this conventional deterrence policy with an equally strong political push against Moscow: a policy exemplified by the administration's imposition of the congressionally-designed CAATSA sanctions, which target oligarchs associated with the Putin regime. Beyond this, other political actions implemented by the administration include the largest expulsion of Russian diplomats in history, further sanctions imposed on Russian firms and cyber groups, and the appointment of Russia hawks to roles of National Security Advisor, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State. In addition to current policy, the panelists also looked to the future and gave their prescriptions on how the administration’s Russia policy should proceed. A discussion centered on two themes: further targeting President Putin’s support base and developing the United States’ ability to counter Russian hybrid warfare. The former is predicated on expanding the existing sanctions regime to better target the ability of Russian oligarchs to access the international financial system and targeting Putin's regime by exposing its corruption to the Russian people. The latter is a call for increased investment in cyber defense and eliminating the avenues by which Russian disinformation campaigns reach Americans. In response to a question from Helsinki Commission policy advisor Rachel Bauman regarding the role of Congress in future Russia policy, the panelists agreed that Congress could take the lead, serving as a check against the rhetoric of President Trump, and continue the strong policy the administration has implemented.    

  • Helsinki Commission to Host Roundtable On Illicit Trade

    WASHINGTON—The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission, today announced the following briefing: ROUNDTABLE ON ILLICIT TRADE Thursday, June 21, 2018 1:00 p.m. Russell Senate Office Building Room 485 Live Webcast: www.facebook.com/HelsinkiCommission Illicit trade—the transnational smuggling of illegal goods—has grown dramatically in the era of globalization thanks to modern technology, free trade zones, and the absence of the rule of law in many countries. Today, the shadow economy is booming and is estimated to account for up to 8 to 15 percent of world GDP. This roundtable will bring U.S. government officials together with representatives of companies, associations, and organizations working to combat illicit trade. Participants will discuss policy responses to the growing threat of illicit trade and how to build effective public-private partnerships. Officials from the intelligence community, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of State will discuss their agencies’ roles in the struggle to stem the tide of illicit trade. Discussion will follow each presentation. Participants include: Russ Travers, Acting Director, National Counterterrorism Center, Office of the Director of National Intelligence Convergence: How illicit trade networks fit in with other illicit networks Christa Brzozowski, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Trade and Transport, Department of Homeland Security Contraband: How to stop the flow of illicit goods Lisa Dyer, Director, Office of Intellectual Property Enforcement, Department of State Counterfeiting: How to combat the violation of IP protections Aaron Seres, Acting Section Chief, Financial Crimes Section, FBI Corruption and Organized Crime: How to counter those who facilitate illicit trade The event is open to the public.

  • Bill introduced to make doping in worldwide events a crime

    WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. lawmakers introduced a bill on Tuesday that would make it a crime to use or distribute performance-enhancing drugs while competing in international sports events. The bill in the House is named after Grigory Rodchenkov, the Russian lab director who blew the whistle on Russian cheating at the Sochi Olympics. Penalties would include fines of up to $250,000 for individuals and prison sentences of up to 10 years for those who make, distribute or use banned substances at international events, such as the Olympics. U.S. and foreign athletes would be subject to the law if competing in an event that includes four or more U.S. athletes and other athletes from three or more countries, even if the event is held outside the United States. The bill cites the U.S. contribution to the World Anti-Doping Agency as justification for jurisdiction over events outside American borders. The bill also would expand the timeframe for athletes and corporate sponsors who were cheated to file lawsuits seeking damages. Other countries, including Germany, Italy and Kenya, have similar laws. U.S. authorities have long been hamstrung by limited legal options to prosecute doping cheats.

  • U.S. Lawmakers Seek to Criminalize Doping in Global Competitions

    United States lawmakers took a step on Tuesday toward criminalizing doping in international sports, introducing a bill in the House that would attach prison time to the use, manufacturing or distribution of performance-enhancing drugs in global competitions. The legislation, inspired by the Russian doping scandal, would echo the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it illegal to bribe foreign officials to gain a business advantage. The statute would be the first of its kind with global reach, empowering American prosecutors to act on doping violations abroad, and to file fraud charges of a different variety than those the Justice Department brought against top international soccer officials in 2015. Although American leagues like Major League Baseball would not be affected by the legislation, which would apply only to competitions among countries, it could apply to a league’s athletes when they participate in global events like the Ryder Cup, the Davis Cup or the World Baseball Classic. The law would establish America’s jurisdiction over international sports events, even those outside of the United States, if they include at least three other nations, with at least four American athletes participating or two American companies acting as sponsors. It would also enhance the ability of cheated athletes and corporate sponsors to seek damages, expanding the window of time during which civil lawsuits could be filed. To justify the United States’ broader jurisdiction over global competitions, the House bill invokes the United States’ contribution to the World Anti-Doping Agency, the global regulator of drugs in sports. At $2.3 million, the United States’ annual contribution is the single largest of any nation. “Doping fraud in major international competitions also effectively defrauds the United States,” the bill states. The lawmakers behind the bill were instrumental in the creation of the 2012 Magnitsky Act, which gave the government the right to freeze financial assets and impose visa restrictions on Russian nationals accused of serious human rights violations and corruption. On Tuesday, the lawmakers framed their interest in sports fraud around international relations and broader networks of crime that can accompany cheating. “Doping fraud is a crime in which big money, state assets and transnational criminals gain advantage and honest athletes and companies are defrauded,” said Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas, who introduced the legislation on Tuesday. “This practice, some of it state-sanctioned, has the ability to undermine international relations, and is often connected to more nefarious actions by state actors.” Along with Ms. Jackson Lee, the bill was sponsored by two other congressional representatives, Michael C. Burgess, Republican of Texas, and Gwen Moore, Democrat of Wisconsin. It was put forward just as Russia prepares to host soccer’s World Cup, which starts Thursday. That sporting event will be the nation’s biggest since the 2014 Sochi Olympics, where one of the most elaborate doping ploys in history took place. The bill, the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act, takes its name from Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the chemist who ran Russia’s antidoping laboratory for 10 years before he spoke out about the state-sponsored cheating he had helped carry out — most notoriously in Sochi. At those Games, Dr. Rodchenkov said, he concealed widespread drug use among Russia’s top Olympians by tampering with more than 100 urine samples with the help of Russia’s Federal Security Service. Investigations commissioned by international sports regulators confirmed his account and concluded that Russia had cheated across competitions and years, tainting the performance of more than 1,000 athletes. In early 2017, American intelligence officials concluded that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 American election had been, in part, a form of retribution for the Olympic doping scandal, whose disclosures Russian officials blamed on the United States. Nations including Germany, France, Italy, Kenya and Spain have established criminal penalties for sports doping perpetrated within their borders. Russia, too, passed a law in 2017 that made it a crime to assist or coerce doping, though no known charges have been brought under that law to date. Under the proposed American law, criminal penalties for offenders would include a prison term of up to five years as well as fines that could stretch to $250,000 for individuals and $1 million for organizations. “We could have real change if people think they could actually go to jail for this,” said Jim Walden, a lawyer for Dr. Rodchenkov, who met with the lawmakers as they considered the issue in recent months. “I think it will have a meaningful impact on coaches and athletes if they realize they might not be able to travel outside of their country for fear of being arrested.” The legislation also authorizes civil actions for doping fraud, giving athletes who may have been cheated in competitions — as well as corporations acting as sponsors — the right to sue in federal court to recover damages from people who may have defrauded competitions. Ms. Jackson Lee cited the American runner Alysia Montaño, who placed fifth in the 800 meters at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Two Russian women who placed first and third in that race were later disqualified for doping, elevating Ms. Montaño years later. “She had rightfully finished third, which would have earned her a bronze medal,” Ms. Jackson Lee said, noting the financial benefits and sponsorships Ms. Montaño could have captured. The bill would establish a window of seven years for criminal actions and 10 years for civil lawsuits. It also seeks to protect whistle-blowers from retaliation, making it illegal to take “adverse action” against a person because he or she has disclosed information about doping fraud. Dr. Rodchenkov, who has lived in the United States since fall 2015, has been criminally charged in Russia after he publicly deconstructed the cheating he said he carried out on orders from a state minister. “While he was complicit in Russia’s past bad acts, Dr. Rodchenkov regrets his past role in Russia’s state-run doping program and seeks to atone for it by aiding the effort to clean up international sports and to curb the corruption rampant in Russia,” Ms. Jackson Lee said, calling Tuesday’s bill “an important step to stemming the tide of Russian corruption in sport and restoring confidence in international competition.”

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