Authority vs. Capacity: OSCE

An English language newspaper in the country of Georgia, Georgia Today, dated June 22-25 published a notice signifying Georgian President’s meeting with Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) ambassadors.

I find OSCE to be yet another international organization which has the authority but lacks the capacity to make change. The OSCE mission has proven its inefficacy in Georgia.

Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili, along with the deputy foreign minister, the President’s international secretary, and the parliamentary secretary, hosted the 25-member delegation paying an official visit to Georgia. The sides discussed the importance of OSCE support for the ongoing democratic processes in Georgia, with the special emphasis on security problems and the situation in the occupied territories. The President expressed that the occupied territories should not be left beyond monitoring and provided the Ambassadors with the detailed information on the policy carried out by the Russian Federation in the region.    

With 57 participating States in North America, Europe and Asia, the OSCE is the world’s largest regional security organization. The OSCE claims that it works for stability, peace and democracy for more than a billion people, “through political dialogue about shared values and through practical work that makes a lasting difference.” With its Institutions, expert units and network of field operations, the OSCE should address issues that have an impact on common security, including arms control, terrorism, good governance, energy security, human trafficking, democratization, media freedom and national minorities.

Originally founded as CSCE (Helsinki Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe), since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CSCE role changed when The Charter of Paris for a New Europe was signed in 1990. In 1999, the OSCE called for a political settlement in Chechnya and adopted a Charter for European Security. For this reason, Russia referred to OSCE as a Western tool for "forced democratization.”

OSCE’s significance to regional governance in Georgia was made difficult by the hegemonic power, Russia, within the regional organization. The fate of the OSCE's Georgian field operations had been uncertain since Georgia’s war against Russia over the separatist republic of South Ossetia in 2008. The conflict resulted in Russia's occupation of large chunks of the territory of Georgia. Moscow recognized the independence of South Ossetia, one of Georgia's two separatist republics (the other is Abkhazia), and announced plans to set up military bases in both of these breakaway provinces. The OSCE mission to Georgia prior to August of 2008 consisted of a main office in Tbilisi, the capital, and a smaller, subordinated field representation in South Ossetia's capital. Their presence was mandated to serve as a base for eight unarmed OSCE military monitoring officers delegated to verify the implementation of the 1992 Georgian-South Ossetian ceasefire agreement. After the war an additional 20 OSCE officers were deployed to areas adjacent to South Ossetia.

Russia, claiming that "new realities on the ground" required a reassessment of the OSCE's presence in the region, said it would not routinely extend the mandate of the OSCE mission to Georgia for another 12 months, and suggested instead that the South Ossetia office be separated from the Tbilisi headquarters and that its status be upgraded to that of a fully-fledged mission. Other OSCE participating states rejected Russia's proposal, however as talks entered a deadlock, in December of 2008, Finland - which then held the rotating chairmanship of the OSCE - announced the imminent termination of the organization's mission to Georgia. At present, the mission officially remains in a state of "technical closure." Against Western demands that the OSCE monitors be allowed to move freely within their respective areas of responsibilities and across the de facto border, Russia asserts that guidelines should be developed with South Ossetia's consent.

This example demonstrates a regional organization having authority but lacking capacity, where a regional power is exercising its influence. Even when an organization is founded to ensure regional security and peace, or conflict prevention and the protection of human rights, confusing and overlapping mandates may reduce effectiveness, and regional policymakers and governments have limited resources for meaningful participation in multilateral forums.