Poland in the OSCE

At the Permanent Council meeting, 45 OSCE participating States*, including Poland, invoked the Moscow Mechanism. It will be followed by a mission of independent experts to establish the facts of possible violations regarding Russia's arbitrary detention of civilians in Ukraine and to make recommendations on a possible solution to the situation.

Many credible sources, including previous Moscow Mechanism expert missions, ODIHR, the UN, as well as civil society organisations, report that Russia is unjustifiably detaining huge numbers of civilians in Ukraine. Prisoners are tortured, subjected to sexual violence, deprived of access to a lawyer, and representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross also have no access to them. The whereabouts of many prisoners are unknown. Prisoners include representatives of local Ukrainian authorities, humanitarian aid volunteers, human rights defenders, as well as other representatives of civil society, journalists, media representatives, clergy, teachers, ordinary citizens.

Three members of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission have also been unlawfully detained for more than 700 days.

The OSCE Moscow Mechanism (1991) is one of the OSCE's tools for monitoring the implementation of and compliance with obligations in the area of human rights and democracy by OSCE participating States. The Moscow Mechanism is triggered on an ad hoc basis at the request of an individual participating State or group of participating States. Since Russia's attack against Ukraine (February 2022), the OSCE Moscow Mechanism has been activated three times: on 3 March 2022 and 2 June 2022 to investigate Russia's violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in relation to Russia's ongoing war against Ukraine, and on 30 March 2023 to investigate Russia's systemic deportation of children from Ukraine.

* Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkiye, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America