BASIC NOTES

BASIC Board Member, former OSCE Head of Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina and frequent head of OSCE election observation missions

KEY POINTS  

• The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is under scrutiny following criticism of the organization by political leaders from the Confederation of Independent States (CIS) at their July ‘summit.’  The attitudes of the leadership, and of substantial parts of the population in countries of the CIS, is that stability is more important than democracy, and that the state apparatus must be strengthened before the reins of control are loosened. There is some logic in the idea of gradualism, but much depends on how this is accomplished.
  
  
• Among ‘Western’ OSCE members, there is strong resistance to the idea that the organization’s human dimension should be de-emphasized, or that scrutiny of a state’s human rights record amounts to interference in its internal affairs.
  
  
• Potential reforms under consideration, as proposed by OSCE Chairman in Office (CiO), Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy, include:  
  • Increasing finance for activities in the security and economic baskets – antiterrorism, border controls, combating trafficking, policing, education;
  • Greater involvement of the CIS states in the direction of the OSCE; 
  • Moving the center of gravity of OSCE eastward by convening major events in the CIS;  
  • Strengthening the role of the OSCE Secretary General; and  
  • More emphasis on working with “Partners for Cooperation,” such as Afghanistan. 
    
    
• CIS objections center on long-held Russian grievances that the OSCE pursues “double standards,” devoting too much attention to human rights and democracy in the countries of the CIS and the Balkans, while ignoring problems elsewhere in the OSCE region. Discussions on reform continue, leading up to the Sofia Ministerial in December, and Russia is preparing a letter to all OSCE member states.
  
  
• OSCE standards for democratic elections and election observation missions are singled out for special criticism by the CIS states. But new or expanded criteria for election monitoring have been under discussion in the OSCE, the CIS, the Council of Europe and elsewhere for some years. 
  
  
• Raising the profile of the OSCE, particularly in Washington, could have a healthy effect on an organization that is increasingly performing below its potential. But it is difficult to imagine dramatic changes in a consensus-based organization where member states have widely differing priorities. 

Introduction

Judging by the public exchanges, the December Ministerial meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Sofia will feature a debate about the future of the organization.

The scene was set in July, at an informal summit of the Confederation of Independent States (CIS) in Moscow. On July 3, nine of the CIS leaders[1] endorsed a Declaration sharply critical of the OSCE, claiming that it had “been unable to adapt itself to the demands of a changing world.” The Declaration argued that the OSCE pursues “double standards,” devoting too much attention to human rights and democracy in the countries of the CIS and the Balkans, while ignoring problems elsewhere in the OSCE region. In its pursuit of democracy, the statement said, the OSCE has proven unwilling “to take into account the realities and specific features of individual countries” and interferes in the internal affairs of member states. The statement singles out the OSCE Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), arguing that its election monitoring is “frequently politicized and does not take into account the specific features of individual countries.” The CIS called for “standard objective criteria for assessments by ODIHR and OSCE missions of election processes throughout the OSCE area.”

According to some participants, the CIS declaration was drafted by the Russians, and did not represent the views of all. Georgia, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan did not sign and Moldova attached a reservation calling on the OSCE to do more in mediating conflicts (such as the one with breakaway Transnistria). Some signatories quietly explained that they signed “out of solidarity,” and others assured OSCE representatives that they were only trying to be constructive.

The OSCE Chairman in Office (CiO), Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy, took the expressed desire to be constructive at face value. At a meeting of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly on July 5, he called for the “transformation” of the OSCE, which he believed had become “embedded in a kind of bureaucratic status quo.”  In a subsequent August 9^th letter to OSCE member states, Passy said he had seriously analyzed the CIS declaration, and welcomed the “high level of interest” in the OSCE’s work. He proposed further exchanges, leading up to the Sofia Ministerial where various reforms could be approved.

CIS Objections

Russian frustration with the OSCE has been building for some time. In part this is a heritage from Soviet times, as the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 failed to accomplish what Moscow had worked for since the early 1960s – a decoupling of the United States and Western Europe, a guarantee of the integrity of post-World War II borders, and an emphasis on security and economic issues, which would serve as a supporting structure for the concept of “peaceful coexistence.”  While some of these goals were achieved in Helsinki, this came at the expense of firm commitments to Helsinki “Basket 3” principles of human rights and fundamental freedoms. The West and dissident groups within the Warsaw Pact countries used these commitments to good advantage over the next two decades. The Final Act removed the defense that human rights were a matter of the internal affairs of each country, which could not be interfered with.

Russian grievances concerning the OSCE continued in the 1990s despite the more democratic rule of Boris Yeltsin. Moscow was never supportive of the establishment of large OSCE field missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, which constrained Serbian ambitions. They were unhappy when the OSCE closed its field missions in Estonia and Latvia, which offered protection to the Russian minority there. They were most unhappy when OSCE members rejected the one-sided Moldovan peace plan developed by Putin’s Presidential Administration. While criticisms by ODIHR election observers were only one of the factors that brought about Sheverdnadze’s resignation, this raised the possibility that critical ODIHR monitoring reports could be a destabilizing factor in other countries.

But references to the OSCE’s failure to take into account the “realities and specific features” of some member states hint at a more philosophical basis for the Russian position. The attitudes of the leadership, and of substantial parts of the population in countries of the CIS is that stability is more important than democracy, and that the state apparatus must be strengthened before the reins of control are loosened; thus Putin’s emphasis on the “power vertical,” or the strong ties that bind the periphery to the center.

During the Russian Duma elections last winter, a representative of a pro-Putin party frankly admitted to the author that the authorities made massive use of the resources of the state to suppress the Communist vote. “I will never understand you Western observers,” he said. “Left to themselves, many voters would revert to the habit of voting for the communists, and they could well regain power. You should be grateful to us for preventing this.”

Similar rationales have emerged from senior officials in Kazakhstan during an election observation. Kazakhstan is a new country, with no tradition of democracy or self-rule. If political parties were allowed to form freely, divides would develop along ethnic, religious or geographic lines. There would be a “Russian” party representing what once was the majority population, and a Kazakh party devoted to suppressing the Russians. Then, lurking in the background are the militant Islamic groups, eager to spread religious strife. Thus, goes this line of reasoning, we must dole out democracy gradually.

Independent sociological research in many CIS countries suggests that these views are widely shared. In general, the level of political culture is low, and political parties in general rank toward the bottom in terms of institutions that enjoy the confidence of the population. In Russia, much of the population feels “humiliated” by the breakup of the Soviet Union and the ups and downs of the Yeltsin years. Voters are concerned about their material well-being, and fear that political reforms will backfire and cause a meltdown such as happened in Russia in 1998. It is thus no surprise that the leading Russian reformers of the 1990s are among the least popular figures in Russia, together with the oligarchs that pocketed much of the wealth of the state.

There is thus some logic in the idea of gradualism, but much depends on how this is accomplished. It is one thing to provide a restrictive legislative framework, which for example prohibits ethnically based parties or outlaws hate speech. But often extra-legal methods are used to “manage” democracy. For example, a minister in one successor state to the USSR explained fraud in vote counting to the author thus: “In order to understand our approach to election results you must remember our experience with Five Year Plans in Soviet times. The goals were impossible to meet, so we made up the numbers. We follow the same precedent now with elections.”

Thus, many observers in the CIS react to the proposal that new standards be developed for democratic elections by asking why it is necessary to have new standards when the old ones are not adhered to.

Western Flexibility

Judging by the OSCE CiO’s statements, the U.S. Congress and State Department, and the debates that have taken place in Vienna, there is broad agreement that reforms of the OSCE are needed, and that more work should be done on developing standards for democratic elections. However, there is strong resistance to the idea that the human dimension of the OSCE should be de-emphasized, or that scrutiny of a state’s human rights record amounted to interference in its internal affairs. On this point, there have been many references to the politically binding commitments undertaken in the 1991 Moscow Human Dimension Meeting, according to which participating states “categorically and irrevocably declare that the commitments undertaken in the field of human dimension … are matters of direct and legitimate concern to all participating states, and do not belong exclusively to the internal affairs of the state concerned.” OSCE member states that joined the organization since 1991 have subscribed to the same commitments. In his call for “transformation,” OSCE Chairman in Office Passy specified that the core commitments on human rights and freedoms should remain untouched, and that “balance” among the three “baskets” should not be attained by de-emphasizing human rights.

Once this line has been drawn, the stage is set for a discussion of how much has been done already to strengthen the security and economic “baskets” and reorient the geographic balance. The Chair in Office has talked about new ventures in the field of anti-terrorism, prevention of trafficking, border control, policing, education, arms control and trade. At the same time, Russian critics claim that the OSCE looks on the security and economic baskets as “trash bins,” meaning that they are places to discard valueless ideas.[2]  

In terms of geographic balance, it is certainly true that OSCE resources spent by OSCE field presences is skewed, though perhaps not in exactly the way in which CIS complaints suggest. The 18 OSCE field missions are exclusively in the Balkans and the CIS, and 12 of the 18 are in the CIS. But in terms of money spent on field projects, more than half is spent on Southeastern Europe, while six percent is spent on Central Asia and 15 percent in the Caucasus. The CIS projects are carefully tailored to the desires of the host governments, so there is little chance of any “interference in internal affairs.”  Russian sensitivity on this point is probably driven more by new NATO interest in the Caucasus and Central Asia than OSCE programs or plans. During the past two years the OSCE has frequently talked about the need to do more in Central Asia, for example, in the security and economic field, but a combination of low donor priorities and host country reluctance to approve new projects or staff has made it difficult to increase OSCE activity.

A key area of OSCE activity has been conflict prevention and dispute resolution. The organization once had high hopes of facilitating negotiations among the parties in Nagorno-Karabakh, Georgia, Moldova, etc. When it appeared that the political will existed to find solutions to these problems, the OSCE was thought to be able to play a useful role in helping to introduce decentralized federal systems, providing peacekeepers or assisting with the development of democratic institutions. However, since the OSCE Istanbul summit of 1999 where President Yeltsin erupted at criticism of Russian actions in Chechnya and the more recent OSCE rejection of the Russian peace plan for Moldova, OSCE influence in these situations has been reduced. In part this is because Russia has been more open about wishing to expand its influence in the “near abroad,” which in turn is no doubt influenced by the expansion of NATO and the EU.

CiO Passy has suggested the areas that could be further explored before the Sofia Ministerial:

• Increasing finance for activities in the security and economic baskets – antiterrorism, border controls, combating trafficking, policing, education. If donors and hosts agree, this is a real possibility, but most of these areas are seen as involving “internal affairs.”

• Greater involvement of the CIS states in the direction of the OSCE, “including the chairmanship.” As Kazakhstan is the only CIS state that has expressed an interest in taking up the chairmanship in 2009, there is no “quick fix” here. But there is more room for CIS nationals in senior positions in headquarters and field missions, and of course the invitation to closer consultations implies a larger voice for the CIS in summit decisions.

• Moving the center of gravity of OSCE eastward by convening major events in the CIS instead of Vienna and points west. This has the advantage of seeing more OSCE money spent in the CIS, but one wonders whether this will be met with the unqualified approval of CIS delegates to these meetings.

• Strengthening the role of the OSCE Secretary General. OSCE member states have been discussing for some time giving the Secretary General a larger political role, and it seems the time has come to do this. No doubt the CIS countries would appreciate a stronger Secretary General who shared some of their priorities, but not one who does not.

• More emphasis on working with “Partners for Cooperation,” such as Afghanistan. While Passy did not say so, there has been considerable discussion of how the OSCE’s experience could be used in supporting a Middle East peace settlement.

Election Monitoring and Standards

The CIS declaration of July 3 and subsequent statements by CIS officials single out OSCE standards for democratic elections and ODIHR’s election observation missions for special criticism. Speaking of the OSCE’s “double standards” and “failure to take account of the realities and special features of individual countries, the Russian Federation’s representative to the OSCE went on to explain:

These attitudes manifest themselves particularly in the work of the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) which mainly deals with monitoring and assessment of election results in participating states. This work of the ODIHR is frequently politicized and does not take into account the specific features of individual countries. For that reason, we believe it necessary to draw up standard objective criteria for assessments by the ODIHR and OSCE missions of election processes throughout the OSCE area.[3]

Actually, the subject of new or expanded criteria for election monitoring has been under discussion in the OSCE, the CIS, the Council of Europe and elsewhere for some years now. The Russian Central Election Commission drew up its own “Convention on Standards for Free and Democratic Elections,” which the CIS Parliamentary Assembly approved in 2001. That document has been discussed in the Council of Europe and the OSCE. Meanwhile the OSCE/ODIHR has been preparing a discussion paper on election principles for some time, in consultation with OSCE member states. At the Maastricht OSCE Ministerial in 2003, it had been decided that there should be a discussion of the need for new commitments in preparation for the Sofia Ministerial Council.

Mr. Veshnyakov used this same formulation, “Copenhagen Plus,” in replying to a question on the validity of OSCE election standards in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on August 25, 2004. He suggested that “Copenhagen Plus” was needed because much had happened in the electoral world since 1990, and as an example he cited electronic voting. He pointed out that Russia was experimenting with touch-screen voting machines that produced paper “control ballots” that would be preserved in a ballot box for manual verification if necessary, contrasting this with the e-voting he had observed in Florida in 2002, which had no such safeguards. This evidently disappointed the Kazakh hosts who are introducing an e-voting system with no paper trail.

What Next?

It would seem, on the surface, that there is more rhetoric than substance surrounding the CIS Declaration, and that the Chairman in Office’s openness to dialogue and the OSCE’s readiness to consider Copenhagen Plus in terms of electoral standards should satisfy CIS critics. But the political straws in the wind suggest that more is yet to come.

• A second CIS “summit” is to take place in Astana, Kazakhstan on September 15-16, 2004, just before the September 19 Parliamentary Elections in Kazakhstan, which OSCE/ODIHR is observing. The issue of the future of OSCE and of election standards would seem to be on the agenda, given the attendance at preparatory meetings.

• Kazakh Foreign Minister Tokayev will speak to the OSCE Permanent Council on September 9, and he will address the issue of the future of the OSCE. President Nazarbayev will be in Vienna at the time, where he will pursue a bilateral agenda, but with his bid to have Kazakhstan take over the chairmanship in 2009 no doubt on his mind.

• Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov reported to President Putin on August 24 that his ministry is preparing an address to all OSCE member states calling on them to begin constructive reforms aimed at making the OSCE a truly effective organization. Lavrov added that plans for OSCE reform would be discussed at Putin’s meeting with French President Chirac and German Chancellor Schroeder in Sochi. The meeting, which had to be postponed because of Putin’s return to Moscow to deal with terrorist acts, took place August 31-September 1, but there is no evidence that OSCE reform took up much time at a meeting that concentrated on terrorism, Iraq, relations with the United States and other “hot” issues.

The OSCE has seldom been the subject of so much attention. Raising its profile, particularly in Washington, could have a healthy effect on an organization that is increasingly performing below its potential. At the same time it is difficult to imagine dramatic changes in a consensus-based organization where member states have widely differing priorities.