The conference is being held in place of the regular OSCE Human Rights Conference (HDIM), as this year, for the third time in a row since 2020, no consensus could be found to hold it. The conference was opened with speeches by the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and Foreign Minister of Northern Macedonia, Bujar Osmani, and by the Polish Foreign Minister, Zbigniew Rau, representing the host country. The discussions in the plenary sessions were dominated by the war against Ukraine, the human rights situation in Russia, Belarus and Central Asia, and the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh. Switzerland spoke in the opening session and in the thematic session on freedom of the media, as well as in the session on torture prevention and the death penalty.
