Conflict and Security in the Former Soviet Union: The Role of the OSCE by Maria Raquel Freire

Author:Maria Raquel Freire [Freire, Maria Raquel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781351773850
Google: GFJHDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 38810534
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

Mission to Tajikistan prevent re-escalation of armed confrontations clearing house for information and advice promote respect for human rights assist in the development of democratic institutions and processes political, social, economic re-building maintain contacts

Crisis management has proved the most problematic area, the main difficulties arising from the lack of true commitment from participating states at the decision-making level, and from external and internal aspects of the missions in the field. These are related to the consensus decision-making principle, which has hampered the adoption of more pragmatic decisions, and the lack of enforcement mechanisms, which limit the organization’s persuasive power. Moreover, since the OSCE’s field activities cannot be assessed in isolation, the role of other players, including international organizations and the Russian Federation, and the level of receptivity of the host country, are detrimental aspects. Mediation efforts pursued by the organization envisage the framing of relations between the parties in an acceptable political framework according to OSCE principles. Nevertheless, the OSCE has found many difficulties both at headquarters level and in the field in pressuring the parties to the finding of a final settlement. This has been the case of the conflicts in Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Moldova.

In general, the OSCE has proved its usefulness in preventive diplomacy and conflict prevention. The OSCE tools, particularly the field missions in combination with the High Commissioner, the ODIHR and the Representative on Freedom of the Media, supported by the organization’s principles and Vienna decisions, have proved positive. The case of Latvia, where the mission in the field closely collaborated with the HCNM in the promotion of an ethnically stable situation, and worked together with the ODIHR and the Representative on Freedom of the Media for the promotion of the human dimension of the OSCE in the country, is an example. The closure of the OSCE mission to Ukraine and its replacement by a Project Coordinator also demonstrates the successful accomplishment of the mission’s mandate and the organization’s flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances.

However, the OSCE’s preventive diplomacy activities have also met difficulties. The increasingly repressive and authoritarian posture of the Belarus authorities is an example of the obstacles the OSCE might face in the pursuit of its mandate, eliciting different levels of success of the organization’s missions in the field. Moreover, some participating states understand the OSCE’s continued involvement in their countries as negative, such as in Belarus. The lack of a profound knowledge by the general public and, in many instances, the local populations, also does not contribute to a positive assessment of the missions’ reach. The publicity for the OSCE’s preventive diplomacy activities is limited, restricting the understanding of its scope in the former Soviet space. ‘[T]he OSCE suffers from the unrewarding lot of preventive diplomacy: the test of its success is a non-event, i.e., the non-occurrence of conflicts’.89

The missions face endogenous and exogenous constraints on their activities. Unwillingness to implement OSCE principles and to give effect to agreed commitments in the field constitute external constraints on their activity. How the missions’

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