II OSCE
| DOI | 10.1177/016934410502300406 |
| Date | 01 December 2005 |
| Author | Arie Bloed |
| Published date | 01 December 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Part B: Human Rights News |
II OSCE
ARIE BLOED
1. DEBATE ON THE REFORM OF THE OSCE CONTINUES
The saga on the ‘reform’ of the OSCE continues at full speed. With the Report of the
Panel of Eminent Persons (PEP) on the table since June this year, serious high-level
negotiations were held in Vienna in the beginning of October as a preparation for
the Ljubljana Ministerial in December. These High-Level Consultations were
preceded by two international expert conferences, one of which organised by the
quarterly ‘Helsinki Monitor’ in Vienna. The Consultations were held over two days,
but did not produce visible progress (yet).
It may be recalled that the ‘reform’ debate has been triggered, in particular, by
the Russian Federation and some of its closest allies who are highly critical of the so-
called ‘unbalance’ in OSCE’s activities in the sphere of the human dimension. The
various ‘colour’ revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, after flawed
elections which were strongly criticised by the OSCE, only strengthened Moscow’s
apprehension of the organisation. Basically, Moscow is blaming the OSCE for
triggering the three revolutions in stead of paying attention to the real causes of the
revolutionary developments in these three countries, i.e. the highly corrupted and
flawed election processes which brought the masses to the streets. In this case the
OSCE as the ‘messenger’ of the bad news became the target itself.
As a result the OSCE has become the hostage of the Russian authorities, as some
observers are saying. Due to Russian opposition, OSCE has been unable to realise a
lot of its plans, in particular also because the RF made the adoption of the budget
dependent upon ‘progress’ in the reform debate. It was only in late spring that a
budget for this year could be adopted. Consensus about a new scale of contribution
could not be achieved and this remains so far an unsolved and serious problem. The
tendency is clearly to reduce the OSCE budget even further which would
increasingly hamper the organisation in its ambitious tasks. The short-term budget
cycle of the OSCE basically makes it impossible to embark on long-term
commitments, for instance in the area of police reform.
Time will show whether the Ljubljana Ministerial will be able to produce real
results. It seems that the Russian Government is ‘softening’ its demands to a certain
extent, but if its wishes would be fulfilled the OSCE would become a highly
bureaucratic organisation under complete control of its participating States, in
particular also in the Human Dimension. This would lead to a drastically different
organisation in comparison to its present functioning and could lead to a ‘sell out’
of, in particular, its Human Dimension. A key target of the OSCE’s critics is, not
surprisingly, the way the organisation is monitoring elections in the various
participating States which the Russian wish to bring under much stricter control of
the OSCE States themselves.
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Vol. 23/4 (2005) 645
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