FARAH KARIMI (NETHERLANDS)
Farah Karimi (Netherlands) was appointed as the Special Representative on Central Asia by OSCE PA President Pia Kauma in September 2023.
Karimi is the Head of the Netherlands Delegation and has previously served as the Special Representative on Youth Engagement. She has also led a number of OSCE PA election observation missions, including to Serbia in December 2023.
She was first elected to the Dutch Parliament in 1998. As a Member of the House of Representatives, she took the initiative for the consultative referendum on the European Constitution. Serving as Vice Chair of the Permanent Committee for European Affairs and as a Member of the Committee for Justice, she was involved in foreign affairs, development cooperation, European affairs and defense.
She left the House of Representatives in 2006 and served as director of Oxfam Novib for ten years. Serving in the Senate since 2019, Karimi is involved in, among other things, asylum policy, foreign affairs and European affairs.
As Special Representative on Central Asia, her mandate consists of the following:
MANDATE
- Encourage active participation by parliamentarians from Central Asian OSCE participating States (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) and Mongolia in the work of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly to strengthen parliamentarism in the region;
- Liaise with and support the work of the OSCE field presences in the region, as well as relevant OSCE institutions, international and regional organizations and diplomatic missions;
- Encourage closer contacts between the parliaments in the region to promote greater intra-regional co-operation in all three OSCE dimensions;
- Advise the President on developments in the region, including opportunities for enhanced parliamentary dialogue and further inter-parliamentary co-operation among the Central Asian OSCE participating States and Mongolia.
