Germany, in cooperation with the Swiss Chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), held the Berlin Tenth Anniversary Conference on Anti-Semitism on November 12-13, 2014, against the backdrop of the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict.
The Conference was set to be a commemorative meeting acknowledging government efforts to combat anti-Semitism over the past decade. However, the recent rise in anti-Semitic incidents such as those that resulted in deaths in Kansas, Brussels, and Toulouse earlier this year, dictated that the meeting focus on a way forward to address current problems. Although the Conference attracted a notably lower level of attendance than it did a decade earlier, participants identified key opportunities for coalition development and OSCE action in the years to come.
The Conference was attended by some 550 participants (including approximately 200 civil society representatives), and featured high-level panelists and speakers including Ambassador Samantha Power, United States Ambassador to the United Nations; Miroslav Lajcák, Slovak Republic Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs; Lynne Yelich, Minister of State of Canada; Paavo Lipponen, Former Prime Minister of Finland; and Tzachi Hanegbi, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Israel.
