Kazakhstani Diplomat to be Appointed as OSCE Commissioner

As OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Prime Minister of Albania Edi Rama stated at the 27th Ministerial Council (an event organized by Tirana online), Kazakhstan’s Ambassador to Sweden and Denmark Kairat Abdrakhmanov will be appointed as OSCE commissioner on national minorities.

«We are going to appoint new OSCE managers: Helga Schmid as secretary-general, Matteo Mecacci as head of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, Teresa Ribeiro as OSCE representative on Freedom of the Media and Kairat Abdrakhmanov as commissioner on national minorities,» Edi Rama said.

German diplomat Helga Schmid, who will replace Thomas Greminger as OSCE secretary-general, will be the first woman to get this position inside the organization.

As Russian edition Kommersant wrote earlier, some Russian officials used to criticize the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe by saying that it fails to provide a proper representation of member-countries. They blamed OSCE for not reflecting the geographical scope of the organization because its key institutions never included officials from the former Soviet republics except Baltic states. Moscow was ready to support any candidacy from the eastern part of Europe for OSCE’s top positions.

Thus, Kairat Abdrakhmanov will be the first CIS representative (excluding Baltic states) to head one of the key OSCE institution.

Currently, he holds the position of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Kazakhstan to Sweden and the Kingdom of Denmark. Abdrakhmanov is a career diplomat, who has been working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 1993. He has started his career from the third secretary and was appointed as minister in 2016. Over the years, Abdrakhmanov worked in Kazakhstan’s embassies in the U.K., Israel, Austria and Slovenia.

Before the diplomat became foreign minister, he was the permanent representative of Kazakhstan to the UN from 2013 to 2016. Since March 2019, Abdrakhmanov has served as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Kingdom of Sweden and since July 2019 as ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark.