I have an article posted at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty today, OSCE Summit Less Than the Sum of Its Parts in which I single out two points which I think often get lost by the "seminarians" and the "resolutionaries":
All states commit human rights violations, and the U.S. reputation has been considerably tarnished in recent years by its condoning of torture in the "war on terror" and its inevitable killing of civilians in protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet in analyzing the failures of OSCE, there is an elephant in the room that few want to confront head on without debilitating moral equivalence: the Kremlin's imperial overreach and meddling, and the Central Asian dictatorships' cruelty.
More proposals for various new OSCE bodies cannot paper over the essential truth about security: Western governments mistrust leaders in the East and doubt the sincerity of their intentions when they jail dissidents or stand by while journalists have their arms broken or human rights monitors are assassinated. In the Soviet era, it took the appearance of Poland’s Solidarity, as much as the West European peace movements, to put an end to the opposing military blocs and their missiles
It's become terribly politically-incorrect to point out the root of the problem in the OSCE region -- the Kremlin (and the Central Asian tyrannies that are propped up by it or a backlash to it). So never fearing politinkorrektnost', I get to the heart of the matter because I don't think the major challenges for OSCE and human rights are headscarves in France or minarest in Switzerland or GLBT or Roma rights -- although these are all valid issues that need to be addressed fairly and squarely by the Western European powers with OSCE values applied. The threat to *security* -- i.e. violence that leads to the sort of pogroms we saw in southern Kyrgyzstan this summer where more than 400 people were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced, and the war between Georgia and Russia, not to mention the lingering "frozen conflicts -- these are all a function of Kremlin meddling and Central Asian dictatorships as I said.
I was underwhelmed by the bloated and distended final document produced by the parallel conference which would have been the envy of an ODIHR wordsmith for its vagueries and conference-speak. For some reason, the coalition opted to put out a more punchy statement well after the summit, perhaps away from the media glare of Astana, in which they called the summit a "wasted effort" which surely would be seen as a slight by their Kazkah hosts. But unlike another document (which does not seem to be online anywhere, so I'll put it here, from a different coalition of Central Asian groups which forthrightly and simply called for the release of political prisoners, the #parOSCE organizers said the summit was a failure because...the parties failed to adopt an "Action Plan".
The broad language in the Astana Commemorative Declaration is no substitute for a targeted, meaningful action plan committing participating States to concrete steps to strengthen implementation mechanisms in all three dimensions.
Of course, it's not for a lack of a "framework" or "an action plan" that states don't take action; they don't take action due to a lack of a political will and a profound clash of civilizations, if you will. Putting observers in Georgia doesn't need to be a carefully-worded box to tick on a draft document that gets negotiated; it needs to have Russia stop blocking it.
I was glad that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was able to appear at a town hall meeting of 600 people where many more representatives of civil society than could fit at the parallel conference were able to come, as well as states, and her message, calling for greater media freedom and government openness was not hindered by the forcible exposure of the Department's overseas cables in Wikileaks. If anything, the cables validated what the people of the OSCE countries already know all too well -- that their leaders are vain, corrupt micromanagers with a pension for drinking, dancing, villas, and yachts gifted by oil companies.
At the core of the Helsinki understanding was that peace, progress and intellectual freedom --security and human rights -- were indissolubly linked, as Andrei Sakharov, the Nobel Peace prize winner and rights campaigner famously began explaining in 1968. To be sure, the echoes of the Helsinki principle are still in the outcome document today:
The OSCE’s comprehensive and co-operative approach to security, which addressesthe human, economic and environmental, political and military dimensions of security as an integral whole, remains indispensable.
If this approach truly remains "indispensable," than the organization itself can remain so. Yet many feel it has been overtaken by other competing acronyms from the European Union to the Collective Security Treaty Organization and even the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Kazakhstan has put up all these initiatives for ever new bodies such as on economic and environmental affairs, all seemingly benign and yet all departing from the fundamental absence of civil rights in that country and others that, when present, begin to better grapple with the economic and social rights issues.
As I noted, De Brichambaut made a troubling statement himself in putting human rights after sustainable development in his interview for the OSCE website:
Security begins with the sustainability of resources and the availability of opportunities – for education or for work, regardless of gender, religion or ethnicity. It is rooted in the inviolability of rights and in the belief that there is adequate recourse if those rights are violated.
So sure, security is "rooted in" inviolability of rights but FIRST comes "sustainability of resources and availability of opportunities for education or for work, regardless of gender, religion or ethnicity" -- as if discrimination (as in what preoccupies Western Europe, although of course it exists in Eastern Europe) were at the root of inequalities, or the failure of "some power" to lay on "sustainable resources" -- however they are defined (gas in Turkmenistan?)
I'm sorry, but I think security begins with the right not to have your government kill you, or stand by while you are killed by violent forces which they either condone or fail to prosecute. Oleg Kashin's journalism about a forest being chopped down over local commercial and political interests despite intense civil society protest is an example of why freedom of speech needs to precede "sustainability of resources". Oleg's arms and legs were broken and he is still in a hospital -- not because resources were unsustainable, but because of impunity in Russia over which the Kremlin presides.
I'm afraid I see the secretary general's comments as indicative of that modern tendency to privilege economic and social rights as somehow requiring pride of place before other rights can function or even be recognized. Certainly Kazakhstan has always used that old Soviet argument to justify its failures of democracy and free media. In fact, however, without democracy and good governance, development -- sustainable or otherwise -- does not proceed. The 1995 UN conference in Vienna on human rights was supposed to declare a post-Soviet truce on arguing over which was more important, economic or civil rights, and pronounce them both equally necessary; it's as if that consensus has been lost in OSCE.
In the thicket of so many other problems, the eternal tragedy of Belarus is forgotten. In 1999, the problems of the Belarusian opposition captivated the OSCE ministers more -- thanks to the OSCE mission head Amb. Hans-George Wieck, God bless him, Belarusian opposition leaders were freed from jail and able to travel to Istanbul to take part in the parallel meetings of the summit there and OSCE, led by the U.S. and Europe despite Russia's objections, put a good deal of effort into trying to make elections there more free.
Today, Kazakhstan -- and for that matter anyone else -- has done little to ensure that Belarus has a free and fair election. Of course, there was that offer from Poland and Germany of $3.9 billion if dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka holds decent elections -- which is preposterous given the mere few months for the presidential campaign and the general lack of media and resource access for the opposition. Sikorski should have given some of the billions to the opposition to run a satellite TV station out of his country instead. The cynicism (and utopianism) with which the RFE/RL Belarus Service continues to cover this issue is part of the problem -- and since my comment is still stuck in moderation, here it is: Download Belarus comment
At the core of the Helsinki understanding was that peace, progress and intellectual freedom --security and human rights -- were indissolubly linked, as Andrei Sakharov, the Nobel Peace prize winner and rights campaigner famously began explaining in 1968. To be sure, the echoes of the Helsinki principle are still in the outcome document today: The OSCE’s comprehensive and co-operative approach to security, which addressesthe human, economic and environmental, political and military dimensions of security as an integral whole, remains indispensable." If this approach truly remains "indispensable," than the organization itself can remain so -- yet many feel it has been overtaken by other competing acronyms from the European Union to the Collective Security Treaty Organization and even the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
It was only over strenuous Serbian -- and Russian-backed -- objections that Kosovo ultimately gained its independence, and relatively peacefully, in a process largely outside the OSCE per se, bouncing between the EU and the UN Security Council, although OSCE had once helped quell the Balkan wars.
The Astana document puts stress on the Corfu process to encourage a security dialogue in Europe and the Kazakh chair has also proposed creating yet more structures within OSCE such as economic and environmental bodies, but as I noted, the basic lack of trust that comes when you deal with people who break journalists' arms and allow lawyers to die in jail can't be overcome until that behaviour *stops*.
Recent Comments