The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly adopted on 5 July Tbilisi Declaration, addressing key issues in the fields of political affairs and security, economics, the environment, human rights, and humanitarian concerns.
The Declaration, resulting from months of work by committee rapporteurs and several days of debates at the Assembly’s Annual Session in Tbilisi, contains wide-ranging policy recommendations and pronouncements, serving as policy guidance to OSCE governments and the international community.
On the crisis in and around Ukraine, the Declaration urges all parties to fully implement the Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements, and “underlines respect for the principles of the inviolability of frontiers and territorial integrity, peaceful settlement of disputes, equal rights, and self-determination of peoples as stated in the Helsinki Final Act.”
Some 300 parliamentarians from 54 countries spanning North America, Europe and Central Asia contributed to the Session’s work. The Declaration and resolutions will now be sent to parliaments and to the foreign ministers of OSCE countries as policy input ahead of the OSCE’s 2016 Ministerial Council meeting this year in Hamburg.
Representatives of more than 50 parliaments of OSCE member states have voted for [the declaration], which once again showed strong rejection by the European community of Russia’s aggression. 122 votes were ‘For’," Ukraine's MP Anton wrote on Facebook.
Only 6 votes of the Russian and Armenian delegates were cast against the document.
Gerashchenko said that this declaration of the OSCE PA "is another building block in the system of economic and political sanctions against the aggressor state – the Russian Federation." He added that it is small but important victory on the path of diplomatic confrontation with Russia.