Time for a new OSCE Strategy?

Following this recommendation, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (OSCE PA) launched its Helsinki +40 project in September 2013.  Leaders of the OSCE PA, prominent think tanks with expertise in the OSCE, diplomats – including former diplomats who had participated in the Helsinki process from the beginning – and representatives of civil society took stock of where the OSCE currently stands and explored possible new tools and methods of moving forward.

The OSCE’s role in reconsolidating European security

Throughout the project, the crisis in Ukraine was the elephant in the room. Although the Organization has faced other serious difficulties and challenges to its purpose and political relevance over the last 20 years, the current crisis has been a litmus test of both its strengths and weaknesses.

It has, on the one hand, brought the OSCE to the fore as the sole international organization accepted by all parties to the conflict that aims to find a political solution to the crisis. The OSCE is more necessary than ever and it has proven, during this crisis, that over the years it has developed a wide array of instruments to address crisis situations, although the use of these instruments has been significantly weakened by the consensus requirement in the Permanent Council.

However, while temporarily increasing the visibility of the OSCE, the crisis has also highlighted its weaknesses, such as insufficiency of effective tools, limited mandate and lengthy decision-making procedures. The existing OSCE conflict prevention mechanisms failed to prevent and counter the crisis from the outset.

Stronger Institutions

Strengthening OSCE institutions by expanding their independence and allowing greater room for action that would not require a preliminary consensus decision of the Permanent Council can be part of the solution. Such action could include intensified mediation and multilateral verification or fact-finding, including within the scope of the Vienna Document (the OSCE’s primary set of military confidence and security building measures). These activities could be joint efforts of OSCE institutions.

The OSCE PA could be associated more closely with such activities through mandates to conduct fact finding and mediation missions. The Conflict Prevention Center could be further strengthened, including through the creation of a civilian rapid reaction capacity – a roster of military experts available to be deployed on short notice as part of a civilian mission during crisis.

The first and foremost task for the OSCE is to work towards a political settlement of the Ukraine crisis, based on respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country, as enshrined in the Helsinki Decalogue Principles. Without this, mutual trust in the OSCE area cannot be restored. It is in the interest of all OSCE participating States to prevent the emergence of another protracted conflict in the area. Everything should also be done to ensure that Ukraine does not become a new Berlin wall separating Russia and the West.

As United States President Gerald Ford said on the occasion of the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, “History will judge this Conference not by what we say here today, but by what we do tomorrow – not by the promises we make, but by the promises we keep.”

By Spencer Oliver and Maria Chepurina

Spencer Oliver is Secretary General of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. Maria Chepurina is an OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Programme Officer. They co-ordinated the Parliamentary Assembly’s Helsinki +40 project.

The OSCE PA’s Helsinki +40 project was conducted in co-operation with the Russian International Affairs Council in Moscow, the German Marshall Fund in Washington, D.C., the Swedish Institute of International Affairs in Stockholm, the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen, the Belgrade Fund for Political Excellence in Belgrade and the Finnish Institute of International Affairs in Helsinki.

The results were presented at the OSCE PA Annual Session in Helsinki on 6 July 2015. Read more at www.oscepa.org