Overview by the ODIHR Director The events of 2014 reasserted the continued relevance of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) as the world’s largest regional security organization. The crisis in and around Ukraine, the most serious security crisis in the OSCE region since the end of the Cold War, underlined the importance of the Organization’s role in promoting security, including in what the OSCE calls the “human dimension” of security. As in every security crisis, it is the most vulnerable individuals who suffer the most. When the OSCE was established in 1975, with the signing of the Helsinki Final Act, the human dimension of the OSCE’s comprehensive concept of security was designed to protect the rights of everyone in the OSCE area, including the most vulnerable. The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) is the largest of the OSCE’s autonomous institutions and covers almost all aspects of the human dimension – not only the protection of these fundamental human rights, but also work in the areas of elections, democratic governance and rule of law, promoting tolerance and non-discrimination, and improving the situation of Roma and Sinti. 6 ODIHR Annual Report 2014 Today, ODIHR works within a broad mandate of commitments in these areas, allowing us to assist OSCE participating States whenever and wherever the rights of marginalized individuals are at stake. All 57 participating States have recognized that their commitments to strengthen democracy and human rights safeguard against real threats to the peace and security of their societies. 2014 saw governments in some participating States implicitly – or explicitly at times – undercutting the importance of the human dimension commitments they made in the past. While the crisis in and around Ukraine brought into stark focus many of the issues on which ODIHR’s mandate is based, implementation of human dimension commitments can be strengthened everywhere. As such, ODIHR in this Annual Report looks back and highlights the Office’s activities in what was a very eventful and intense year of work supporting the implementation of commitments across the human dimension throughout the OSCE region. The Office’s efforts to support democracy and human rights in Ukraine have been highlighted