OSCE Spillover Monitor Mission to Skopje

The OSCE Spillover Monitor Mission to Skopje is the Organization's longest-serving field mission. In 2001, during a seven-month conflict in the country, the strength of the Mission grew steadily in response to its increased role to over 50. Following the internationally brokered Ohrid Framework Agreement of August that year, which sealed the end of the fighting by ensuring the rights of all in the country, the OSCE took on an enhanced mandate which eventually more than quadrupled the size of the Mission.

Its subsequent role has involved almost 200 additional staff in confidence-building, monitoring, police advising and the training of a multi-ethnic force of more than 1,000 new cadets from non-majority sections of the population of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Currently, the OSCE Spillover Monitor Mission to Skopje has three main areas of activity: monitoring; police training and development; and other political activities related to the implementation of the Ohrid Framework Agreement.

Tasks

In addition to tasks outlined under the initial mandate, the framework agreement outlined, and decisions of the Permanent Council tasked the Mission to assist in:

• redeploying police in the former crisis areas
• training 1000 non-majority cadets to be police officers by July 2003 (with a view towards ensuring that the police services will generally reflect the composition and distribution of the country's population by 2004)
• strengthening the institutions of local self-government
• developing projects in the areas of rule of law and media development
• implementation of the Framework Agreement in the area of inter-ethnic relations.

Activities

Since the successful completion of police redeployment, the mission has evolved to keep pace with the developments on the ground. The Police Developing Unit consolidated the policing activities of the mission to focus on community-based policing and training, and placed a greater focus on its mandate in the fields of media, rule of law, local self-government and inter-ethnic relations.

To tackle these tasks Confidence-building, Media Development and Rule of Law Units were established, creating a clear division of labor in implementation of its expanded mandate