Chief of Staff Dorothy Douglas Taft addressed human rights in Russia and commented upon the expansion of the 2000 report – written by the Moscow Helsinki Group and the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ) – by twice as many regions in the 1999 report, which covered only 30 of Russia’s 89 regions. The report provides objective and complete information on the situation with human rights in Russia and greatly helps the OSCE monitor the regions.
Lumilla Alexeyeva and Micah Naftalin represented these two organizations and discussed the issues raised by the report. They were joined by Victor Lozinsky, who shed light on his experience as a human rights advocate in the regions of Russia. They addressed the glaring discrepancies between Russian constitutional guarantees and international obligations and the daily realities of life, as well as the election of President Vladimir Putin and whether he has only made human rights efforts worse in the Russian Federation.
