Meeting with the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities

Today, on June 13, 2023, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan Rashid Meredov held talks with the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Kairat Abdrakhmanov, who arrived in Ashgabat on a working visit.

During the meeting, the current state and prospects for joint work within the human dimension of the OSCE, including the mandate of the High Commissioner on National Minorities, were discussed.

R.Meredov stressed that in recent years, cooperation between Turkmenistan and the Office of the High Commissioner has reached a new level and acquired a systemic and consistent character.

The sphere of education has been singled out as a priority area of cooperation. In this context, an important step was the signing in April 2021 of the Memorandum of Cooperation between the Ministry of Education of Turkmenistan and the Office of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities on cooperation on linguistic and cultural diversity in Turkmenistan.

In order to implement the Memorandum, it was proposed to continue active interaction with the Office of the High Commissioner within the framework of the Educational Program in Central Asia, the fourth phase of which ends in December this year. The project aims to assist in achieving significant progress towards the deep integration of various ethnic communities in Central Asia through the improvement of educational level.

The parties agreed to develop a Roadmap for the implementation of this Memorandum for 2023-2025.

Cooperation within the framework of the National Action Plan for Human Rights in Turkmenistan for 2021-2025, adopted in 2021, was designated as another promising area of interaction.

The parties also exchanged views on the agenda of the upcoming round table in Ashgabat on June 15 “OSCE Best Practices in the Effective Participation of National Minorities in Consultative Mechanisms”.