Developing OSCE Field
Activities CORE and German Federal Foreign Office
Organize Workshop, Vienna Hofburg
|
Left to right: Amb. Heiner
Horsten (Germany), Amb. Dr. Wilhelm Höynck, former OSCE
Secretary General, Amb. Renatas Norkus (Lithuania, Chairmanship),
Mr. Yerkin Akhinzhanov (Kazakhstan), Amb. Eoin O’Leary (Ireland),
Amb. Adam Kobieracki (Head of the Conflict Prevention Centre/OSCE
Secretariat)
To contribute to discussions on direct activities of the OSCE
in its participating States, the Centre for OSCE Research
(CORE) and the German Federal Foreign Office jointly organized
a workshop on "Developing OSCE Field Activities" at Vienna
Hofburg, 26 and 27 May 2011.
The aim of the workshop was both to signal the special interest
of Germany in these formats for international security cooperation,
as well as to address specific issues such as the thematic
orientations of OSCE field activities, the respective expectations
of the host governments affected and matters of internal interaction
within the OSCE.
Representatives of governments, OSCE field operations and
academic institutions from a total of seven participating
States (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia,
Ukraine and Tajikistan) were invited to the event. They talked
about their views on conceptual and organizational issues
of OSCE field work with representatives of the current Lithuanian
OSCE Chairmanship and the two other members of the 2011 OSCE
Troika (Kazakhstan and Ireland), with experts from the OSCE,
the European Union and the Council of Europe. Many representatives
of the Delegations to the OSCE also attended the event.
The workshop met with great interest in Vienna. At the heart
of the lively exchange of views among the approximately 60
participants and guests were the shared responsibility for
internal developments in the participating States and the
generation of ideas for implementing this responsibility in
all three dimensions of the OSCE.
Germany supports the efforts of the OSCE to assist its participating
States to implement their political commitments on the ground.
"In many cases, only the continuous presence of field missions
allows the OSCE to help the host country effectively. The
forms of assistance require constant flexible adaptation to
changing political, organizational and personnel challenges",
said the first Secretary General of the OSCE, Ambassador ret.
Dr. Wilhelm Höynck in his speech at the workshop.
For about two decades, the direct involvement of the OSCE
in its participating States has played an important role in
the European security dialogue. During the well-publicized
OSCE reform discussions in 2005 and as part of the so-called
Corfu Process – an OSCE dialogue format in 2009 and 2010 –
this was the subject of a sometimes energetic dispute. Just
recently, the leaders of the 56 OSCE participating States
emphasized the importance of the OSCE field missions at the
OSCE Summit in Astana in December 2010.
