Council of Europe conventions/treaties are also open for signature to non-member states, thus facilitating equal co-operation with countries outside Europe. The Council of Europe's most famous achievement is the European Convention on Human Rights, which was adopted in 1950 following a report by the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, and followed on from the United Nations 'Universal Declaration of Human Rights' (UDHR). The Convention created the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The Court supervises compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights and thus functions as the highest European court. It is to this court that Europeans can bring cases if
Member states of the Council of Europe president Nursultan Nazarbayev in Astana in 2008. In December 2013, a Joint Declaration on enhancing cooperation between Kazakhstan and the Council of Europe in 2014–15, was signed with the purpose of paving the way for Kazakhstan's accession to the Council of Europe's multiple conventions in the field of criminal justice. Hashim Thaçi, Kosovo's Minister of Foreign Affairs, stated in December 2014 that an application for membership of the Council of Europe was planned to be filed within the first quarter of 2015. Observer status was designed for non-European democracies willing to contribute to democratic transitions in Europe. Canada, Japan, Mexico,