[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
115th Congress } Printed for the use of the
1st Session } Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
======================================================================
The Western Balkans: Perspectives
From OSCE Field Missions
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
November 1, 2017
Briefing of the
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Washington: 2017
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
234 Ford House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-1901
[email protected]
http://www.csce.gov
@HelsinkiComm
Legislative Branch Commissioners
HOUSE SENATE
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ROGER WICKER, Mississippi,
Co-Chairman Chairman
ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida BENJAMIN L. CARDIN. Maryland
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas CORY GARDNER, Colorado
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee MARCO RUBIO, Florida
RICHARD HUDSON, North Carolina JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois THOM TILLIS, North Carolina
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas TOM UDALL, New Mexico
GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island
Executive Branch Commissioners
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
[II]
ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION FOR SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
The Helsinki process, formally titled the Conference on Security
and Cooperation in Europe, traces its origin to the signing of the
Helsinki Final Act in Finland on August 1, 1975, by the leaders of 33
European countries, the United States and Canada. As of January 1,
1995, the Helsinki process was renamed the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe [OSCE]. The membership of the OSCE has
expanded to 56 participating States, reflecting the breakup of the
Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.
The OSCE Secretariat is in Vienna, Austria, where weekly meetings
of the participating States' permanent representatives are held. In
addition, specialized seminars and meetings are convened in various
locations. Periodic consultations are held among Senior Officials,
Ministers and Heads of State or Government.
Although the OSCE continues to engage in standard setting in the
fields of military security, economic and environmental cooperation,
and human rights and humanitarian concerns, the Organization is
primarily focused on initiatives designed to prevent, manage and
resolve conflict within and among the participating States. The
Organization deploys numerous missions and field activities located in
Southeastern and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. The
website of the OSCE is: .
ABOUT THE COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE
The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as
the Helsinki Commission, is a U.S. Government agency created in 1976 to
monitor and encourage compliance by the participating States with their
OSCE commitments, with a particular emphasis on human rights.
The Commission consists of nine members from the United States
Senate, nine members from the House of Representatives, and one member
each from the Departments of State, Defense and Commerce. The positions
of Chair and Co-Chair rotate between the Senate and House every two
years, when a new Congress convenes. A professional staff assists the
Commissioners in their work.
In fulfilling its mandate, the Commission gathers and disseminates
relevant information to the U.S. Congress and the public by convening
hearings, issuing reports that reflect the views of Members of the
Commission and/or its staff, and providing details about the activities
of the Helsinki process and developments in OSCE participating States.
The Commission also contributes to the formulation and execution of
U.S. policy regarding the OSCE, including through Member and staff
participation on U.S. Delegations to OSCE meetings. Members of the
Commission have regular contact with parliamentarians, government
officials, representatives of non-governmental organizations, and
private individuals from participating States. The website of the
Commission is: .
[III]
The Western Balkans: Perspectives From OSCE Field Missions
November 1, 2017
Page
PARTICIPANTS
Robert Hand, Policy Advisor, Commission for Security and
Cooperation in Europe 1
Jeff Goldstein, Deputy Head of the OSCE Mission to Skopje (via
videoconference) 3
Ambassador Jonathan Moore, former Head of the OSCE Mission to
Bosnia and Herzegovina 6
Michael Uyehara, former Deputy Head of the OSCE Mission to Serbia 8
Ambassador Marcel Pesko, Director of the Conflict Prevention
Centre, OSCE Secretariat 12
APPENDIX
Prepared Statement of Jeff Goldstein 33
Prepared Statement of Jonathan Moore 37
Prepared Statement of Michael Uyehara 40
The Western Balkans: Perspectives From OSCE Field Missions
----------
November 1, 2017
The briefing was held at 10:03 a.m. in Room 202, Senate Visitors
Center, Washington, DC, Robert Hand, Policy Advisor, Commission for
Security and Cooperation in Europe, presiding.
Panelists present: Robert Hand, Policy Advisor, Commission for
Security and Cooperation in Europe; Jeff Goldstein, Deputy Head of the
OSCE Mission to Skopje (via videoconference); Ambassador Jonathan
Moore, former Head of the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina;
Michael Uyehara, former Deputy Head of the OSCE Mission to Serbia; and
Ambassador Marcel Pesko, Director of the Conflict Prevention Centre,
OSCE Secretariat.
Mr. Hand. OK, I think we can start now. It can be somewhat
difficult to start a briefing that's been planned weeks ahead on a pre-
arranged subject, that then takes place on the day after an attack like
that occurred yesterday in New York. It shifts the focus of our
attention away from our work and can make us question the importance of
what we are doing. But then we realize that that is what those who
commit these terrorist acts want us to do.
So, instead, we convene our briefing, which has as its most general
goal making one small but significant region of this world, the
Balkans, a better place for its good people. And we all gather here for
this because we share that goal, even if our perspectives may differ
somewhat. Let us move forward not only undeterred by what happened in
New York yesterday, but more determined than ever to do what we do the
best that we can.
I would like to thank our panel and the audience for being here
this morning to discuss the Western Balkans, or Southeast Europe if you
prefer, and the role of the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe--the OSCE--in assisting the countries of the region as they
continue to recover from the lingering effects of brutal conflicts in
the 1990s, and to reform their political and economic systems in
accordance with OSCE norms and their respective aspirations for
European and Euro-Atlantic integration.
The turnout today is, for me, an indication of ongoing interest in
the Western Balkans. While the region is no longer a high-profile item
in the media or a priority for international action, there is clearly
recognition here--and there should be elsewhere--that the international
community's work in the Balkans has not been completed, and that the
work remaining is important. The Western Balkan countries are part of
Europe, and their stability and prosperity affect European security.
Those countries that have not already done so are at least the next in
line to join NATO or the European Union if they so choose, and delay or
denial of their aspirations for integration have definite implications,
especially today when other outside forces are at play in the region.
And with so much progress achieved since the late 1990s, consolidating
that progress and making it less vulnerable to reversals should not
require the enormous time or resources seen in the past, and yet could
make a significant difference.
The OSCE has been a fairly consistent part of the international
community's response to the challenges of the region, from the outbreak
of the violence in the early 1990s to the post-conflict recovery and
reform efforts that bring us to the present. The Organization's work in
observing elections is well known, but the missions it has deployed in
each of the countries of the region have done good work that is often
ignored. OSCE field activity exists today in Albania, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. I should note a
mission previously was deployed in Croatia, prior to its EU membership.
And we hope to hear about OSCE work in these countries from those
who recently participated in it directly, still do so today, or oversee
it from the Secretariat in Vienna. Hopefully, the discussion will not
be just about the countries of the Western Balkans, but also a little
bit about the utility and the advantages of the OSCE and its assets
more generally as a multilateral diplomatic response to the challenges
the 57 OSCE participating States face today. The presence of the OSCE
in the field is not limited to the Balkans, for example. It is most
visible in Ukraine today, but it had its start with the first
deployments in the Balkans in the second half of 1992.
Short biographies provided by each of our panelists have been made
available, along with any statements that were made in advance, so let
me go on simply to introduce and personally welcome each participant in
order. We will go chronologically in the order in which the missions
were established.
This means we will start with the OSCE Mission to Skopje and its
deputy head, Jeff Goldstein. This mission was one of the first deployed
in the Balkans to counter the spillover effects of the conflict then
raging in Bosnia, and it has maintained a steady presence through that
conflict, the subsequent Kosovo conflict, the conflict in Macedonia
itself in 2001, and to the recent political crisis and ongoing reform
challenges of today. Jeff has been on the Mission for well over a year,
and can provide insights on the latest developments in the country.
I should clarify that the Helsinki Commission refers to that
country by its constitutional name, Macedonia, as does the United
States. But the country was made a participating State of the OSCE
using its interim name, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
Those representing the Organization, therefore, will understandably
need to respect that designation.
I also, frankly, want to start with Jeff while the technology is
working and we can hear and see each other. I have a bit of a Rodney
Dangerfield complex, and my greatest fear right now is turning around
and seeing a blank screen and then wondering what to do next. It's not
easy being me. But since Jeff is there right now and we can hear him
well, I believe, let us proceed. Jeff, do you want to begin?
Mr. Goldstein. Thank you, Bob. And greetings to everyone from
Skopje. I'd like to begin by giving you a brief rundown of events here
over the last year, and then talk a bit more about the role of our
Mission.
2016 ended on a very positive note here in Skopje. After two false
starts earlier in the year, parliamentary elections that had been
called to try and break a political crisis that had been gripping the
country for two years were finally held, and they were judged to be
largely free and fair.
And I think in particular there were two things that are real
positives coming out of those elections. The first is that for the
first time in the history of this country, there was an effort by one
of the major political parties to reach out to voters across the ethnic
divide. And that actually was a very successful effort, in that several
tens of thousands of ethnic Albanian citizens voted for the Social
Democratic Party, or SDSM.
The second positive that came out of the elections is that turnout
was up significantly over the previous elections in 1994, growing by 6
percent, which I think speaks to the fact that the citizens of the
country both cared about politics and had faith that the democratic
process could actually bring positive change to their lives.
Now, the elections did result in a very close result. The
conservative party VMRO, which had been the governing party since 2006,
came away with 51 seats in parliament, while SDSM came away with 49.
The largest Albanian party, DUI, which had been in coalition with VMRO
since 2008, saw its share or its number of voters drop precipitously as
ethnic Albanians not only voted for the Social Democratic Party, but
also for newly minted political parties on the ethnic Albanian
political scene, the Alliance for Albanians and BESA.
Nevertheless, the 10 seats that DUI won would have been enough to
create or recreate a DUI-VMRO coalition with a one-vote advantage in
the 120-seat parliament, and the two parties began negotiations toward
that end, only to fail as a number of senior people in DUI had come to
believe that their party's poor results in the election were a result
of the fact that their electorate had come to see the long-term
partnership with VMRO as a negative, having come to see VMRO as being
an ethnically chauvinistic and highly corrupt party. As a result, down
to the last minute, those negotiations did not produce a coalition.
At that point, Zoran Zaev, the leader of the Social Democrats, as
the leader of the second-largest party in parliament, claimed the right
to receive the mandate to begin coalition talks from President Gjorge
Ivanov. The president refused to give the mandate, however, stating
that he believed Zaev was willing to negotiate with the Albanian
parties on the basis of a policy document that Ivanov claimed was
drafted in Albania, and that he claimed presented a threat to the
sovereignty and security of Macedonia.
This provoked a very tense constitutional crisis that dragged on
for several months, as VMRO engaged in a long-term filibuster in
parliament and pro-VMRO civic groups held large demonstrations on a
daily basis in Skopje and other cities throughout the country. So
although Zaev had a two-seat majority, together with DUI and the
Alliance for Albanians, in essence for late winter and early spring,
politics here were deadlocked.
Then, on April 27th, the deputies from those three parties stayed
after the closing of a session of the parliament and voted in DUI's
Talat Xhaferi as speaker--by the way, the first time an ethnic Albanian
has held such a senior post in the government here. The election took
place at about six in the evening, just as the daily pro-VMRO crowd was
arriving at parliament, and a mob of several hundred broke into the
parliament, and assaulted leading members of the new coalition and
journalists.
Following this violence, President Ivanov relented and granted Zaev
the mandate, and by the end of May, SDSM, DUI, and the Alliance had
formed a new government. The government announced a very ambitious
series of domestic reforms and a major effort to improve relations with
the country's neighbors. Symbolically, the foreign minister's first
trip out of the country was to Athens, where he expressed a desire to
work with Greece towards resolution of the longstanding name dispute
that Bob referenced in his introduction. All of these efforts are aimed
at paving the way to achieving the new government's strategic goal,
which is to reopen the country's integration process with European and
Euro-Atlantic structures that has essentially been frozen since the
Bucharest NATO Summit in 2008.
Just these last couple of weeks, the country held municipal
elections. The main story of these elections in the first round was
VMRO's poor showing. In their first elections as an opposition party in
a decade, the party received 25 percent fewer votes than it had last
December. SDSM won the mayorships in Skopje, almost all of the major
ethnic Macedonian majority municipalities, and even in many of the
rural almost solidly Macedonian municipalities that had up until now
been strongholds of VMRO.
DUI saw only a small increase in their share of the votes from last
December. But with support from SDSM and fractured opposition from the
other Albanian parties, in the first round their candidates made it
through to the runoffs in all of the major Albanian municipalities.
The second round was held just this past Sunday, and the results
are still preliminary as we are awaiting the adjudication by the State
Electoral Commission of complaints. But it appears that these trends
continued as SDSM won 17 of 19 races in which they went head-to-head
with VMRO, and DUI won in most of the runoffs its candidates ran in,
although the Alliance for Albanians did win in one major municipality.
ODIHR election observers found the two rounds of elections to be
generally competitive with unbiased coverage by the media and
reasonably well administered.
VMRO, on the other hand, has denounced these elections as extremely
unfair and said that they will refuse to recognize the results of the
elections. Nevertheless, I want to stress that ODIHR found only
isolated instances of misuse of administrative resources and vote
buying.
These elections, coming as they did only six months into the life
of the new coalition, have roiled the political scene here. But going
forward, it appears at this point that SDSM and DUI will have no
problem in finding the votes they need to maintain their majority in
parliament and return to the reform agenda.
So let me now turn to the role of the OSCE, and particularly of our
Mission over the last year. During the tense days this winter, the OSCE
was urging all sides to work democratically and peacefully to resolve
the crisis. The Secretary General and a special representative of the
Chairman-in-Office both made visits here to reinforce that message. For
our part, the Mission closely monitored the situation on the ground,
including the protests, the situation in parliament, and what appeared
to be a politically motivated attack on a large number of important
civil-society organizations in the country.
With the election of the new government, we have turned our focus
to coordinating with the new local authorities on how best we can
support the reform process in line with our mandate and with the host
country's OSCE commitments. Among the government's top reform
priorities are reforms in the area of rule of law, law enforcement, the
electoral system, freedom of expression and the media, increasing the
role of parliament, and further implementation of the Ohrid Framework
Agreement, which was signed in 2001 to end the intercommunal violence
in the country.
We have put together our plan for 2018 with those priorities in
mind. Those plans--which I have to say are tentative pending final
approval of our budget by the participating States, including the
United States--will include continuing to focus on building cohesive
interethnic relations, with particular emphasis on the area of
education and youth. We will continue to support democratization and
public administration reform, with a focus on enhancing institutional
capacities both on the central and on the local levels; increasing
adherence to democratic governance principles; and further efforts to
improve the capacity of the government to freely and fairly administer
elections. We will continue our long-term work in the areas of
tolerance and nondiscrimination, hate speech, and hate crime. The
Mission will support efforts to implement reforms to increase the
independence of the judiciary, with a focus on transparency and access
to justice. We will continue, as we have for several years, to monitor
high-profile court cases, including those that have the potential to
inflame interethnic tensions and those being brought via the special
prosecutor that was called into being in 2015 to investigate alleged
crimes that were apparent in the illegal tape recordings that were
released by the opposition.
Historically, another major part of our work has been and will
continue to be implementing work on democratic policing and improving
the professionalization of the police. This includes working on
improving accountability, transparency, and policing skills.
We will continue to support and provide expertise to address
transnational threats, high among them fighting organized crime, the
threat of violent extremism, and trafficking in persons, that has been
in large part associated with the migration crisis that had a major
effect here two years ago.
We hope to add two new streams of work this year, bearing in mind
the changes here on the ground. The first is support for the
parliament. One of the things that's become apparent is that the
parliament needs to increase its capacity to provide effective
oversight over the administrative branch and to hold the executive
accountable. We will also be working to promote freedom of speech and
of the media, with a focus on improving the safety of journalists and
improving media literacy.
As Bob mentioned, we are proud to be the oldest field operation in
the OSCE. We'll be celebrating our 25th anniversary this month, and we
look forward to year 26. I think we have a real opportunity in which we
can--working with the local authorities, working with Ambassador Pesko
and the other institutions of the OSCE, and working with our
international colleagues here on the ground--support positive change in
this country.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Hand. OK, thank you very much, Jeff. And before we go to our
next speaker, I just want to confirm: You can hear us?
Mr. Goldstein. Yes, I can hear you fine. Thanks, Bob.
Mr. Hand. That's good.
Well, if the Mission to Skopje was at the beginning of OSCE field
activity, the Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina brought that activity
to a whole new level of prominence and capacity, given the task it
faced to assist implementation of the 1995 Dayton Agreement, starting
with election administration and local confidence-building efforts, and
moving to education and so much more. The Mission to Bosnia has always
been led by an American, as was the Mission to Skopje in its early
years. Indeed, the first head of both of these missions was the late
Ambassador Robert Frowick, a truly effective diplomat for whom I had
the opportunity to work many times.
Jonathan Moore, our next panelist, I believe also worked with
Ambassador Frowick, and has now followed in his footsteps by being the
head of the Mission in Sarajevo until September of this year. Jonathan
not only has a fresh perspective on the Balkans; he also has a wealth
of previous experience, and we are glad to welcome him back to a
Commission event. Jonathan?
Amb. Moore. Thank you very much.
I could go through a long list of the distinguished members of the
audience who are present. Thank you all very much for being here. I'm
especially pleased to see colleagues from the region, and from the
State Department on their way to the region.
Let me say I'm particularly grateful to the Helsinki Commission
members and staff, of course, for the honor of being here and for your
continued interest, especially through Bob Hand, and your focus on the
Western Balkans. And thank you again for the very important May 2016
hearing on corruption in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
I do have to offer some caveats. I should note that the OSCE
Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, as Bob said, has been in the hands
of my distinguished successor, fellow American diplomat Ambassador
Bruce Berton, since the beginning of September. As requested by the
Commission, my remarks today are based on my three-year tenure there.
The views I express here are my own, not necessarily those of the U.S.
Government, or the OSCE. I am not appearing here in my capacity as a
U.S. Foreign Service Officer. No animals were harmed in the preparation
of my remarks. [Laughter.] I think that covers everything.
The OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, established through
Dayton in 1995, has an extensive network of nine offices throughout the
country, 320 dedicated professional staff, and works every day with
people in local communities as well as the most senior political
leaders--and everyone in between--to help keep the peace, protect
fundamental rights, ensure the rule of law, and build prosperity.
The Mission has a uniquely deep and broad mandate. The framework
for OSCE activities is grounded in the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords.
Dayton and the constitution contained in it continue to serve as a key
foundation for Bosnia and Herzegovina and its citizens.
The Dayton Accords gave the Mission a special role in conducting
and observing elections. The Mission's role, of course, over the years
has evolved. The Central Election Commission took on the responsibility
of running elections in 2002. With the goal of helping the country
achieve its OSCE commitments and integration aspirations, the Mission
has used its diverse and active field presence to engage in a variety
of areas, seeking and keeping very close ties with institutions,
organizations, and individuals at all levels of society.
Recalling the Mission's successful efforts and impact during my
mandate, I would highlight three main areas: education, rule of law,
and countering violent extremism. And I will also note the Mission's
positive political role.
Talking about education first and foremost, which is a tremendous
area of interest and concern, there is both segregation and
discrimination in the education sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A
concrete example of the Mission's work was its immediate response to
the secondary-school students in Jajce, who joined forces in the summer
of 2016 to block the creation of a new segregated school. With the OSCE
Mission leading the efforts of the international community, we engaged
both publicly and privately over months and at multiple levels to
prevent the first new case of educational segregation in the country
since 2002. The story gained national and international attention.
While it is important to keep watching the matter--because, as we know,
nothing is ever solved forever--working together, we convinced the
authorities at multiple levels to make other steps instead of splitting
the students. The ultimate credit goes, of course, to the students
themselves, who showed incredible tolerance, maturity, and commitment
to a common future.
With regard to rule of law, for years the Mission has worked to
bring justice to victims and survivors of war crimes. In June 2016, the
Mission released a detailed, hard-hitting analytical report on the
state-level processing of war crimes, where there have been a number of
deficiencies. The analysis was hailed for its insight and practical
recommendations--with a little bit of flak, but I won't get into that
now. Again, the Mission brought about concrete results. The
recommendations are, indeed, being implemented both by the state court
and the prosecutor's office of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And I'd like to
say, with thanks to the U.S. Government, the Mission has embarked upon
a similar effort to improve the quality of processing corruption cases.
Bob, thank you very much for mentioning the terrorist attack in New
York yesterday. This is something on all of our minds. Bosnia and
Herzegovina has suffered four terrorist attacks over the past seven
years, including the 2011 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo. The
country's authorities are working to do what they can, but we all
recognize Bosnia and Herzegovina is vulnerable. Given the deep scars
left by the war, terrorist attacks could greatly damage the stability
of the country by leading to acts of revenge and, therefore, a growing
cycle of conflict.
The OSCE Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina takes advantage of its
grassroots-level involvement throughout the country. As in other areas,
we see clear evidence of the essential role played by local
communities. Having helped establish a series of over 30 coalitions
against hate, local communities are natural allies in building mutual
respect and joint community values. These are locally constituted
groups of individuals and NGOs dedicated to working with each other as
neighbors to emphasize common rights and build broader respect and
understanding.
The April 2015 terrorist attack in Zvornik, which happened just two
days before the visit of then-Chairman-in-Office and Foreign Minister
of Serbia Ivica Dacic, came as a shock to all of us in the region and
around the world. But we learned a very valuable lesson: The local
coalition there, together with the mayor and the Islamic community,
with one voice called immediately for calm and tolerance, opposing any
acts of revenge.
Given that example and building on a project funded by the U.S.
Government, the Mission integrated the fight against violent extremism
into its efforts as a permanent element of the security cooperation
team, one joined by colleagues from across the Mission. The U.S.
Government has also developed scenario-based multi-stakeholder seminars
to provide collaboration and disseminate good practices. With U.S.
Government support, we conducted a very successful tabletop exercise
early last year building international coordination, but also whole-of-
society coordination and collaboration inside the country. The OSCE
Mission is following up on these efforts, and is engaging with youth
and local community leaders on countering violent extremism (CVE) well
into next year.
Let me just talk about the Mission's effectiveness and the
political context. The Mission continues to build capacities at all
levels, within its budget, and speak candidly about both opportunities
and obstacles. Bosnia has many of both. The Mission proves its
effectiveness and the depth of its engagement again and again. Key
factors include the diverse, expert, motivated workforce--women and men
from across the country and many OSCE participating States; the large
network of field offices allows for constant outreach, is flexible and
tailored to practical opportunities, and helps build enduring local
contacts; the extensive media engagement that the Mission has, which is
fostered by a pattern of access to and for the press and defense of
media freedom; as well as recognition by the public that the Mission
does not shy away from difficult tasks and topics, whether at the
national or local level.
The strength of the OSCE Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina can be
summed up as: credibility with everyone, presence everywhere; access to
everyone; engagement with everyone. This helps to bring about results.
In this building and on this Hill, we can talk about ``all politics is
local,'' and grammatically or otherwise it's certainly true. Or, if you
prefer, ``think globally, act locally.'' That is exactly what the
Mission is all about. Even in the political sphere, where we helped
partisan adversaries build coalitions after the 2014 elections, helped
defend the country's constitutional order against attacks from within,
and calmed local tensions, interethnic tensions, both in Srebrenica and
Stolac in 2016, it is evident that the OSCE Mission can make and has
made an important and positive impact.
In conclusion, let me just say what I said when I left Sarajevo, to
offer my deep thanks to all the members of the team of the OSCE
Mission, the Helsinki Commission, and many others, including the
Serbian chairmanship that supported our work, the Secretariat in
Vienna--thanks to Marcel Pesko. I'm glad to be here and look forward to
hearing your questions.
Mr. Hand. Thank you very much, Jonathan.
Keeping the chronological order, the Mission to Serbia was created
after the other two, and only after the ouster of Slobodan Milosevic
from power in late 2000 made it possible. Over time, it, too, has
adapted to Serbia's changing needs as the country seeks to move beyond
a dark chapter in its history.
An American has, thus far, always held the deputy position on the
Mission, just as in Bosnia it's been the Head of Mission. And most
recently it was our next panelist, Michael Uyehara. I mention the
American leadership on these three missions to underscore the
importance the United States has traditionally attached to their work.
Mike is also a friend of the Helsinki Commission throughout his career
at the State Department, especially given his focus on human rights
issues. I welcome you to this briefing today, Mike, and turn it over to
you.
Mr. Uyehara. Thank you, Bob.
Dear distinguished members and staff of the Helsinki Commission,
current and former colleagues of the OSCE, honorable representatives of
the diplomatic corps, ladies and gentlemen, I have worked closely, as
Bob said, with the Helsinki Commission since 2001, when I was a Belarus
desk officer at the Department of State; and then continuing on during
subsequent assignments at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine; as an
office director in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor;
and most recently with the OSCE Mission to Serbia. During these
assignments, I have become increasingly more impressed with the role
played by the Helsinki Commission, a unique institution drawing
together the executive and legislative branches, and bringing together
the Senate and House of Representatives from both sides of the aisle.
As the deputy head of the OSCE Mission, I traveled widely through
Serbia and took the opportunity to speak at American corners in the
country on the topic of the United States within the OSCE and the
OSCE's role in support of Serbia's development. Most of my audiences
were young, often university students or younger, and attending my
talks to have the opportunity to hear a native English speaker. To
break the ice, I would ask each member of my audience what they already
knew about the OSCE. I was disappointed that the majority's answer was
either ``I don't know about the OSCE,'' or that the OSCE promotes
security and cooperation. [Laughter.] Given this level of ignorance
about the role of the OSCE in a country where the OSCE has a mission, I
am grateful to the Helsinki Commission, and particularly Bob Hand, for
arranging an opportunity to publicize and to promote knowledge of the
really great things that the OSCE, through its missions--what the OSCE
refers to as field operations--does, specifically in the Western
Balkans.
I should first emphasize that I offer my remarks as a private
individual. And not surprisingly, the following language will be almost
precisely the same as what Jonathan offered. I no longer have a
connection to the OSCE, and while I remain an employee of the State
Department, the views I express here are my own and not necessarily a
reflection of United States policy, either toward the OSCE, or towards
the Balkans region broadly and Serbia specifically. That said, my
observations and conclusions will probably not differ greatly from what
my former boss, Italian diplomat Andrea Orizio, might provide in his
annual report to the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna.
You've already had the opportunity to hear from Jonathan Moore and
Jeff Goldstein, both of whom I have known for many years, so you
already have an understanding of the role of the OSCE Missions. Just
like the other two OSCE field operations, the OSCE Mission to Serbia's
programs and activities are based on its mandate, part of the decision
establishing it. Thus, it's worthwhile to cite it here. The version
that I will read incorporates changes to the mandate's language
appropriate to the June 2006 decision designating the mission as the
Mission to Serbia after Montenegro's declaration of independence.
The relevant portion of the decision to establish the Mission
states: ``The Mission, acting in close cooperation with the government
of the Republic of Serbia, will provide assistance and expertise to the
Serbian authorities at all levels, as well as to interested
individuals, groups, and organizations in the fields of democratization
and the protection of human rights, including the rights of persons
belonging to national minorities. In this context, and in order to
promote democratization, tolerance, and the rule of law, and conformity
with OSCE principles, standards, and commitments, the Mission will also
assist and advise on the full implementation of legislation in areas
covered by the mandate, and monitor the proper functioning and
development of democratic institutions, processes and mechanisms. In
particular, the Mission will assist in the restructuring and training
of law enforcement agencies and the judiciary. In addition, the Mission
will provide assistance and advice in the field of the media.''
The OSCE Mission's structure reflects the mandate. It has four
programmatic departments: for democratization, for rule of law and
human rights, for security cooperation, and for media. Briefly, the
OSCE Mission seeks to help Serbia build strong, independent,
accountable, and effective democratic institutions. To do so, the
Mission works with government institutions, civil society, and the
media in its mandated areas. It also works with other missions in the
region on joint projects and initiatives.
The OSCE Mission to Serbia has a robust presence in the country,
with a staff of about 130 people. This puts the Mission on a par with
the EU Delegation, and makes it much larger than most bilateral
embassies. While the OSCE Mission comprises a mix of international and
local staff, with the international staff accounting for about 20
percent of total staffing, the OSCE Mission's particular strength is
its local employees. While their remuneration is competitive and
generous, my personal impression is that the local staff are
enthusiastic in carrying out their duties because they are, in the
main, Serbian patriots. As patriots, they believe in the OSCE Mission's
work, and are deeply committed to the Mission's objective of helping
Serbia to advance politically and to overcome the legacy of the past.
Through its programs, the OSCE Mission continues to provide added
value in its core mandated fields through advice and expertise to its
local partners to assist Serbia in becoming a rule based, democratic
society where professionalism, accountability, and meritocracy are
deeply rooted, and where the rights of every individual are protected
by an independent and effective judiciary deriving its authority from a
full separation of powers. The principles of partnership with the host
country and national ownership of accomplishments guides the Mission's
work in helping Serbia achieve full sustainability of its reform
results. Adequate buy-in from the Serbian authorities, and their full
participation in the development and implementation of Mission
programs, ensure that the programs are targeted and topical.
My description of the OSCE Mission's work perhaps still remains
rather general and abstract. To bring the accomplishments of the OSCE
Mission into focus, I shall describe two areas of the OSCE Mission's
work in more detail: the new countering violent extremism project and
the Follow Us initiative.
For quite some time during my assignment, I was frustrated by the
scant attention that international donors were paying to the issue of
countering violent extremism--CVE--in Serbia. International donor
attention to the Balkans was focused on Kosovo and Bosnia and
Herzegovina, where there were cases of terrorist violence that
underscored CVE's relevance. My argument, however, was that the violent
extremism threat in Serbia was not zero. I would argue with various
interlocutors and potential donors that an ounce of prevention was
worth a pound of cure. Just because Serbia did not have a problem now,
we should be carrying out projects strategically to counter violent
extremism so that we would not have a problem in the future.
Thankfully, the U.K. Government saw an intersection with a new
funding mechanism and the CVE issue, which resulted in an offer to fund
a CVE project for the OSCE Mission to implement. We ran with the vague
U.K. expression of interest to develop a full-fledged project. Rather
than focusing on Muslim-majority areas, taking heed of local leaders'
concerns not to be stigmatized simply for being Muslim, we proposed a
project that was national in scope and took into consideration all
manifestations of violent extremism, including threats from Serbian
right-wing nationalism, some of whose supporters had joined the
Russian-backed insurgency in eastern Ukraine.
Realizing that we should not channel our CVE activities in any
specific OSCE Mission department, but that the CVE activities needed to
encompass the broad mandate of the Mission, we positioned the
management and execution of the project in the Office of the Head of
Mission, which would allow the project manager to task and work with
all departments. This approach allowed us to tackle the problem with a
multi-faceted approach, which addresses primarily youth alienation in
all its manifestations.
The OSCE Mission supports the Follow Us initiative started by the
Mission to bring together prominent women, particularly women
parliamentarians from Belgrade and Pristina. In addition to providing
financial support in cooperation with the OSCE Mission in Kosovo for
meetings of the two groups, the OSCE Mission commissioned a
documentary, available in varying lengths, to promote the
accomplishments of the group and the benefit of having women from
opposite communities speak to each other. The documentary has been
screened for several audiences in both Serbia and Kosovo.
The Follow Us initiative's participants most recently developed an
action plan and an objective that includes mentoring the next
generation of Serbian and Kosovo women leaders. As a result of their
decision, the OSCE Missions to Serbia and in Kosovo funded a group of
young women from Belgrade and Pristina to organize a caravan, where
they as a group visited regional cities in Serbia and Kosovo to
describe the impact of the program bringing them together to connect
simply as people.
Using the Follow Us initiative as a template, the OSCE Mission is
also organizing a regional conference in Belgrade of women
parliamentarians to allow them to discuss their common issues as women
and as politicians.
During the course of my adult career, I have worked basically for
two organizations. For nearly 10 years, I was an enlisted soldier and
an officer in the U.S. Army. And then, for slightly more than 30 years,
I've been a Foreign Service officer in the State Department. My
secondment to the OSCE Mission was a unique foray into another
organizational environment. I had the opportunity to work with talented
and accomplished people of many nationalities, with dedicated and
enthusiastic Serbians, and to gain an appreciation for the value of
multinational diplomacy. I am honored to have the opportunity to speak
to you, but I'm also deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to
work at the OSCE Mission to Serbia, one of the real highlights of a
long and rewarding career.
Thank you for your attention.
Mr. Hand. Thank you very much, Mike. That was a great statement.
And thanks especially for your compliments to the Commission and the
work that we try to do here on Capitol Hill.
Mr. Uyehara. Well deserved.
Mr. Hand. To remind us that the OSCE Missions in the Western
Balkans are supported not only by the United States, but by many of our
European partners as well, we finally have Ambassador Marcel Pesko from
the Conflict Prevention Centre of the OSCE Secretariat on our panel. We
are very fortunate to have him here in Washington. He was attending
what I think was a very successful two-day conference on security
matters, specifically what is known as the Code of Conduct on Politico-
Military Aspects of Security, and he agreed to lengthen his stay to be
with us today. He can present the view of the missions from the
perspective of Vienna, and he can say some additional words about those
missions that are not covered by our other panelists here. I welcome
this additional input very much. The floor is yours, Ambassador.
Amb. Pesko. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for the opportunity to be
here. I really appreciate that the Helsinki Commission has invited me
as one of the contributors to this discussion, trying to provide the
perspective from the Secretariat, from the Conflict Prevention Centre
on our work in Southeast Europe or Western Balkans. And I must say I
really appreciate the deepness of commitment on the side of Helsinki
Commission when it comes to dealing with the OSCE business in the
field. It would hard to find anywhere in the OSCE area people that are
as committed and that knowledgeable about what's going on in the OSCE
and how our missions contribute to our common endeavors. So I really
appreciate that this institution is here, and I would find it as one of
the core platforms for the OSCE's cooperation. So thank you for that,
and we will be always ready and happy to respond to the invitations to
come here and share our views with you.
Talking about Southeast Europe without looking at the broader
situation in the OSCE area would not be appropriate. I mean, we have to
recognize that we have a very polarized and fragmentized situation when
it comes to European security order. If you come to Vienna today, you
would find that participating States do not conduct dialogue; they
conduct sets of monologues. And you will find it's really difficult to
find common ground today. And we all know that this is related to the
situation in the east of Ukraine, to that conflict, which exacerbates
these divisions among participating States. This is related to the
violation of fundamental principles on which our organization and our
concept of comprehensive and indivisible security is based. Simply, we
don't have common ground today when it comes to the OSCE and when it
comes to the European security order, and we don't know where this all
can lead.
So, in that context, it's very important that we continue to
maintain our coherent work in the Southeast European region. And
therefore, I would like to highlight the importance of our presence
there. Those are our representatives when it comes to dealing with
local governments, with local societies. Those are our contact points
when it comes to implementing OSCE's policies. And it is, therefore,
very important to maintain support for their work--political support
but also budgetary support and in-kind support.
Looking at the strategic perspective of our field operations,
obviously, the focus has shifted towards the special monitoring mission
in Ukraine. But it's very important that we continue to keep Southeast
Europe very high on our agenda. I think this was one of the reasons why
we have seen over the last several years a certain stagnation in the
reform process in that region.
And we are happy to see today that there is a reinvigorated focus
on the side of the European Union, on the side of NATO, but also the
U.N. Just recently I had trilateral consultations with the EU and the
U.N., and there is clearly now a stronger focus on the region and
interest to address the current challenges the region is facing.
Of course, the OSCE's presences have been there for some time. And
their original mission was to address the conflict, to stabilize the
situation, and to help the nations to come out from the conflicts and
rebuild their nations in a new environment. And I think, as you said,
Bob, that we have achieved a lot of positive results in that area. But
what we need is to have a reinvigorated commitment to the region, and
we need to respond to the current challenges which are there.
And let me be frank on that. We have been seeing recently a
resurfacing of the nationalistic narratives, for instance. We have seen
deterioration of some bilateral relations. We have seen also a
weakening, or not strengthening, of democratic institutions. There are
issues, continued issues, with the media and freedom of expressions in
some participating States. And overall, this is overshadowed by
insufficient or weak economic growth in the region, a high level of
unemployment, particularly among young populations. And also, a
weakening of the role of parliament or not strengthening the role of
parliament in some participating States in the region.
So there are challenges, ongoing challenges. The countries are
going in the right direction, but they continue to have issues, which I
think the international community should continue to address. And as my
predecessors already spoke about the need to strengthen the rule of
law, good governance to strengthen the economic environment to deal
with these transnational threats of organized crime, radicalization,
foreign fighters, of course migration and its implications on the
region. The agenda is full.
What I want to stress is that we really need to refocus and, in
cooperation with the host governments, to identify, to fine-tune this
agenda to their needs so that we work towards strengthening their own
ownership. And I think this is exactly what's going on during the last
weeks and months.
Just recently, we had a meeting of our heads of missions in the
region, and we have identified these priorities as our top priorities.
We are now refining our programmatic work in Montenegro. You have heard
from Jeff also in Macedonia. We are refocusing where we think that the
OSCE could provide more added value. With Serbia, I think we have a
quite effective program of work. And I could continue also with Albania
and with Pristina authorities as well.
At the same time, what we are now focusing on more is capacity
building, so it's more long term in order to strengthen the resilience
of government structures and the civil society to be able to address
and cope with the challenges that are there in front of them.
And, of course, over the years there have been areas where we have
also phased out our cooperation. Let me also be frank about it. The
OSCE is not there forever, or at its size. It should not be there
forever as it is. Our strength is in our flexibility. So it's about how
we are able to identify these needs and how we would accommodate with
our response. Before, we were much more focused on political, military
aspects when it comes to dealing with the aftermath of the war, when it
comes to standardizing the processes of stockpiling of the small arms
and light weapons, for instance, modernizing the armed forces, creating
regional cooperation or grounds for the regional cooperation.
Let me just remind you that this is now on the governments in the
region to continue the implementation of Article IV of the Dayton
Agreement, for instance, which deals with confidence and security-
building measures in that area where the Secretariat and the Conflict
Prevention Center provides only the facilitating role. What we would
like really to have is very practical cooperation with the governments
and understanding where the OSCE can and should continue providing a
good value for them in their reform agenda.
And there is a need to stress that there are very strong reform-
oriented ambitions in each of these participating States. They are, of
course, linked with their Euro-Atlantic and European accession
ambitions. Some of them, like Montenegro, recently joined the NATO;
some of them continue to strengthen their capabilities to deal with
their EU accession role.
And, of course, we are not an implementing agency for the EU. But
what the OSCE is trying to do is to form our programmatic work in order
to strengthen the capacities of the host government in the areas where
it can help them to progress to fulfill the EU criteria as well.
But what I think needs to be highlighted is that the international
community should really focus on the reform agenda in the countries and
tailor this support to their needs. And in that context, we have seen a
recently increased focus by the European Union as well on the region.
And this is a welcomed development, because I think what the region has
lost over a couple of years, a recent couple of years, is a sense of
orientation. In a way, sort of a new impetus when it comes to the
vision of the region was needed.
And recently, we have seen repeated engagements by the European
Commission, by the address of the state of the union of Mr. Juncker
when he pointed to the need to reinvigorate the process of accession of
Western Balkans countries to the EU. So that's the positive
development, and we need to maintain this impetus also with the OSCE's
role.
Of course, at the same time, one cannot ignore the geopolitics
which are there. We have seen recently geopolitical narratives when it
comes to the results of elections in Montenegro, for instance. We have
seen also these geopolitical assessments or interventions in Macedonia
prior to the elections and also after the elections. I am just raising
that which I think is also necessary, that the key actors use also the
OSCE platform to reunite their positions over the Balkans. Simply,
these divisive narratives and perspectives are not helpful when it
comes to the furthering of the reforms and reconciliation in that
region. And simply, we need to be open about that as well.
So I will stop here. As I said, a lot of work in front of the
OSCE--the need for engagement with local governments, create ownership
and have a tailored agenda for each state we are working with,
including when it comes to strengthening the rule of law, good
governance, public administration, fighting corruption, and economic
issues, unemployment.
There is a future, of course, for our work, but we need to also
phase out where we see that the capacities have been already put in
place. What the region needs: reassurance and support for implementing
their vision to become modern, prosperous and stable countries.
And we need to address these issues of those grievances which have
resurfaced and which are recently also shown that they can very
dynamically change the atmosphere in the region immediately as they
appear, and reengage with the leaders into the dialogue--like, for
instance, now we have seen the invigorated progress in the Belgrade-
Pristina dialogue. But we also see a need for having closer dialogue
between Zagreb and Belgrade as well, and really create a sort of sense
of regional responsibility and togetherness that the region is working
on the same agenda and going in the same direction.
Mr. Hand. All right, thank you very much, Ambassador.
At this point, we'll get into the discussion period where people
can make some very brief comments--and I would ask people to keep them
brief--or if they have a question to ask. And I won't use my
prerogative as the moderator to ask the first question. I usually like
it when people in the audience ask my questions for me, so I'll wait
and see what is out there.
Instead, what I would do is try to structure our conversation a
little bit. I would like to give those diplomatic representatives of
the countries that we're discussing today, the Western Balkans, that
are here in the audience an opportunity to make a brief comment about
how their country views the mission that they host, the work of the
OSCE Missions in their neighboring countries and the work of the OSCE
generally.
Let me give those that I ask to make a comment in that regard a
couple of minutes, though, and first turn to someone in the audience
who knows the OSCE very well, but also knows the Balkans very well, Dr.
Michael Haltzel of Johns Hopkins SAIS, who I know needs to leave in a
few minutes.
And so I'm going to break protocol and let Mike ask the first
question or make the first comment so that when he needs to leave he
has his questions answered.
Questioner. Well, thank you, Bob. And I really hate to be ahead of
diplomatic friends like Djerdj, sitting in front of me.
I'm going to begin with embarrassing you and several other people
in the audience. We are here at the Congress. The walls are thick, but
perhaps there are representatives from the staffs here. I would just
like to echo what Jonathan and other people have said about the value
of the Helsinki Commission.
I've been fortunate enough to lead several U.S. Government
delegations to multiweek OSCE meetings, and in that capacity had
several members of the Helsinki Commission--Bob among them, and Orest,
and other people I've seen here--as members of the delegation. And I've
worked with you in Washington also. And honestly, the American people
should be very grateful to have public servants like you folks. I've
never encountered more expertise and a better work ethic than the
people in the Helsinki Commission.
So you folks in Congress, in that direction, if you're listening I
would hope you would factor, for what they're worth, these comments
into your budgetary discussions.
I also am a great fan and believer in the OSCE. And I think that,
first in the CSCE and then OSCE, it's been a remarkable, on balance,
success story. But I think it's fair to say that no organization is
uniformly good or bad, and the record is uneven. And some of you have
discussed that certainly the Permanent Council, which, as Marcel has
said, more often than not has broken down into talking past each other.
I think that the field missions stand out as one of the most
successful elements, maybe the most but certainly on par with a few
others in the OSCE in terms of what they have accomplished. And I am
going to ask a question in spite of my long introduction, and I'm going
to take up where Jonathan left off.
He was talking about the advantages that the field missions have--
credibility, presence, access and engagement. And then several people
talked about the monitoring functions. I think Mike did, and Jeff. And,
of course, from monitoring you get the next step of publicizing what
the national governments, the participating States, have or have not
done.
My question is simply this. The glaring weakness of the OSCE, in
spite of all the successes, has been the lack of an enforcement
mechanism. Everybody knows this, this is a fact of life. You have to
work around that. My question is, to the best of your ability in a
public forum, if you could perhaps tell us what carrots and sticks you
have at your disposal.
Jonathan, of course, could work with the High Representative in
Bosnia and the Dayton powers, and there are other special things in a
few other countries. Marcel talked about EU accession. The OSCE is not
an arm of the EU, but you could help. And there is, of course, NATO,
with the recent case, terrific case, of Montenegro. But basically,
other than name and shame, what kind of sticks do you have? You know,
you could work behind the scenes and build relationships with local
politicians.
So that's my question. You talk about effectiveness, you have a
great track record, but you haven't gotten everything you wanted or we
wouldn't have the flaws that come out every year at the Human Dimension
Implementation Meeting, or HDIM. I mean, everybody knows that the
United States doesn't live up to all its commitments. If you could give
us an idea of what carrots and sticks you have been able to use to
further the OSCE agenda, I'd be grateful. Thank you.
Mr. Hand. Thank you, Mike.
Who would like to be the first to respond to Mike's question?
Amb. Moore. I can touch on it. Thank you for the opportunity, Mike.
And thank you for being here. I'm very happy to see many familiar
faces.
``Name and shame'' is a big part of it. As part of your question,
you said that we shouldn't look to that so much. One of the reasons why
it's so important for the Mission to engage with everyone everywhere in
Bosnia and Herzegovina is so you can point out the good stories. So
getting as much public attention to the good stories is important, and
then getting public attention to the bad stories where there's failure,
where there are problems, where there are conflicts.
Frankly, over the three years I was Head of Mission, we worked very
hard to expand our media team to work with the media--not just to
support them on the principle of media freedom, but to get them to be
with us. Most media outlets, whether public or private, in Bosnia and
Herzegovina are not very well funded, they do not have many staff out
in the area. So we started paying to take them to where the stories
were. Some of the best stories and some of the worst stories in Bosnia
and Herzegovina are in fairly rural areas, even below the levels of
municipalities.
So bringing the force of public attention to what was actually
happening both as opportunities and problems was something where we
played a direct role. The budget is large, the team is 320 people. We
were able, with a very professional media operation, to actually bring
media attention directly so that instead of just talking about issues,
we were showing, demonstrating and working on them.
In terms, however, of political consequences, that's a very
different topic. That's certainly not something we as a mandate had the
opportunity to do, trying to engage with a variety of very difficult
actors who one day are helping you do a job and the next day are
blocking you at every turn, who are assisting in one area and then in
another are talking about separation or, as I mentioned in my remarks,
challenging the constitutional order of the country. And yet, you need
some of those same people to work with you to get other things done.
That, in the context of being a field mission and the work of OSCE
as an institution to bring about specific sanctions or consequences,
was not really an opportunity for us. But to direct positive energies
and negative energies to challenge institutions when they were not
doing their job--like the office of the prosecutor, who was failing to
do a good job of getting war crimes processed; the issues in Stolac,
where a candidate for mayor assaulted someone exactly on election day--
there are a lot of direct challenges where we had to engage, but more
with the force of argument than the argument of force.
Mr. Hand. Let me quickly ask, Jeff, did you want to respond at all?
I know in the past year that you probably wish you had lots of carrots
and sticks to go through the difficulties Macedonia has faced. Did you
want to comment?
Mr. Goldstein. Well, maybe just in general. I think we all have to
bear in mind that all OSCE field operations are, with the exception of
Kosovo, based in countries that are participating States in an
organization that is a consensus organization. So they're not really
there in a role of using sticks at all.
You know, I think that when some of our programmatic work is not
going well, when we have felt that there was not the political will on
the receiving end, one of the things that we have frequently done is
stopped programming or change our focus. I wouldn't exactly call that a
stick, but it's a reaction to what the real-world possibilities are in
a given time and place.
And I agree completely with Ambassador Pesko that the biggest
carrot we have is our ability to bring expertise to bear in areas that
are a priority for a government at a particular time. And that's what
we're hoping to do now.
Mr. Hand. OK, thank you.
Ambassador?
Amb. Pesko. Well, what I would say is that, indeed, the
organization needs discussion about our field operations. Some of them
have been established 20, 25 years ago without a change in mandate,
however, or any change in focus. So the mandate provided a growth
framework for the work. And in fact, from the tools which were seen
before as conflict response and conflict management presences, we have
now in place presences which are dealing mainly with capacity building
and strengthening of institutions on the site of our host countries.
And recent developments in Western Balkans demonstrated that
positive trends cannot be taken for granted. There are still ongoing
challenges which can turn very fast. So I have to also say that some of
these presences continue to maintain their early-warning and early-
response capabilities.
We have reporting tools. Missions are regularly reporting to
participating States. And this, yes, in fact puts the respective host
countries on the spot, and in fact their own internal developments and
implementation of reform agenda is exposed to all other participating
States. We have to be clear about that. It's not sticks and carrots,
but these participating States are more exposed when it comes to their
own developments and own coping with the challenges as opposed to those
who do not host field operations.
And what the OSCE needs really is to have a good conceptual debate
of how we have moved from the early 1990s to now, when we really try to
refocus our work on the needs of all these participating States. So
what we are trying to do is really to strengthen the sense of ownership
of our work. You know, that's the difference, as Jeff said, between,
let's say, us and the EU or NATO; that we are owned by the host
participating States. So we are not working with sticks, we are trying
to engage.
And what we can offer is, as Jonathan said, local presence,
developed network of contacts at all levels, long term--we are not
coming and going. I mean, we are there and really developing and
nurturing this environment with our host countries. And we are
providing all kinds of expertise, and it's free of charge, by the way,
for the host country. And the host country can identify where they see
their weaknesses.
Let me just remind you that Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov was
recently in Vienna addressing the Permanent Council. And he said very
openly, we want to do our reforms with you in order to achieve our
vision. And the areas where we wanted to work with you is media
freedom--we need to tackle hate speech and attacks against journalism--
accountability and the rule of law, the role of civil society, law on
languages, so we would like to use the OSCE to recreate the sense of
togetherness and to address the ethnic divisions within the country.
And this is exactly where the OSCE can help in a soft way, in an
inclusive way, using different tools.
We don't have only missions, we have the High Commission on
National Minorities, we are also dealing with these issues where we
have freedom of media representative. We have ODIHR, which is regularly
observing the elections, but also coming with its recommendations. And
we are following up with these recommendations together with the local
host country trying to achieve their implementation.
So I think that this sort of stigmatization is still somewhere in
the atmosphere, but it's now we are trying to move towards really a
shared responsibility and shared ownership concept of the field
operations, particularly in the Southeastern Europe region.
Mr. Hand. OK. Thank you.
Before turning to Michael Uyehara for a comment that he would want
to make on this question, I want to echo the point that you made about
the OSCE being a partner with the host countries and their governments,
and about the expertise that the OSCE can provide them, and that they
themselves acknowledge that they want. I think this is one thing which
may distinguish, relatively speaking, the missions in the Balkans from
OSCE Missions elsewhere, where I think some of the participating States
that host missions or offices want the OSCE to be there at their whim;
it's not really a two-way street. I appreciate with many of the Balkan
countries the honesty with which they admit that they need help, and
they don't view it necessarily as something to be embarrassed about or
ashamed about, and that they make use of the OSCE and its expertise.
Of course, we'd like to see that go even further and have countries
be more honest about their own records. But the countries in Southeast
Europe, I think, relatively speaking, do a pretty good job of that. And
I hope that it continues, despite the attacks on some of the OSCE
Missions that we see in other parts of the OSCE region.
Mike, would you like to make a comment?
Mr. Uyehara. I would say that this question of the OSCE not having
an enforcement mechanism is not such a large issue, because, for
instance, the OSCE Mission to Serbia had its offices in the
neighborhood of New Belgrade, and we happened to be right across the
street from the Council of Europe office in a neighboring building. And
you probably know that the Council of Europe has, or the European Court
of Human Rights has, an enforcement mechanism based on the fact that
Serbia and other countries are signatories to the European Convention
on Human Rights. And these countries are regularly fined for violating
the human rights of their citizens when they're brought to the court.
And what is clear, however, is the fact of these fines--and Serbia
is one of the countries with the most cases brought to the European
court--doesn't actually change their behavior. The countries just pay
the fines. They're willing to accept that.
So the threat of sanctions here doesn't necessarily lead to a
change in behavior. You have to find the way to create this change of
behavior. And I would also point out, in my written statement, I note
that Yugoslavia has been the subject of the only sanction available to
the OSCE, which was suspension in the Permanent Council. And that was
through the exercise of that consensus-minus-one principle, which was
the only time that it's been exercised, which means that the threshold
for the OSCE to apply this particular sanction is quite high. And it is
quite properly high.
And then to talk about the OSCE Mission to Serbia, not to put too
fine a point on it, one of the carrots we have is money, right? We can
go to our partners and we can say if there is something that you really
want to do, we can help you to do that. And then in particular with
regard to, for example, the Ministry of Interior, the Italian
government has provided them with a case-management system, which
allows them to track the money--the progress of cases with regard to
money laundering and corruption.
And in order to be able to use this particular system, the OSCE
Mission was able to provide help in terms of adapting that Italian
language-based system into a Serbian language-based system that the
Serbian authorities could use. And that was a method for them to, first
of all, tap into the modern IT developments to show that they have made
this particular progress, but then also to become more effective. And
they couldn't have done that without the OSCE Mission.
And so I think that what is key here with regard to changing
behavior also is the personal relationships and the institutional
relationships that have been developed over time, and that the OSCE
Mission has this particular respectability and credibility with the
Serbian authorities. And I think that we use that fairly effectively.
Mr. Hand. All right, thank you.
Let me now ask members of the diplomatic community from the
countries we are discussing today whether they would like to make a
comment. And I see the Serbian ambassador first. If you could introduce
yourself.
Questioner. Yes, of course. I am Djerdj Matkovic, ambassador of the
Republic of Serbia to the United States. First of all, I would like to
thank you, Bob, personally, and the members of the panel, for this very
enlightening discussion and very useful comments which you have made.
And the Helsinki Commission is very right in making these panels
frequently, because it is important to keep the focus of the United
States on the region. It needs some support from the United States, and
we would like to have the positive impact from the U.S. and from other
countries in our EU accession. And it's, I think, very important.
At the beginning, I'm sorry that I was a bit late. And as one of my
professors at the university said, to compensate, I will have to leave
a bit early. [Laughter.] I apologize for that. But I heard from
Jonathan that you have mentioned, Bob, in the beginning the terrorist
attack in New York, which is really very unfortunate. And we would like
to express our deepest condolences to the people who lost their loved
ones, and our prayers and our hearts go out for them. And I hope the
injured ones will recover very, very quickly.
Also, I would like to recognize and introduce my good friend and
longtime friend, Roksanda Nincic, who is our ambassador currently to
the OSCE in Vienna. She has a long career in diplomacy, and before that
she was in the media, a journalist. And she has made a great
contribution to our work, I think, and our connection with the OSCE.
As far as the Mission of the OSCE in Serbia is concerned, it was
established in 2000, I think, 17 years ago. Although I heard that there
are missions which are longer, we have a joke in Serbia that this OSCE
Mission is soon coming to almost 18 years.
At the beginning it was very useful cooperation, especially in the
establishment of rule of law, judiciary. And in the internal affairs,
we had excellent cooperation. And by years, the Mission also evolved,
in a sense, that had more and closer relations with the government and
also excellent work with the communities, local communities, with the
media and also with the nongovernmental organizations. So I think we
should continue that cooperation.
And I think Ambassador Pesko mentioned a very good thing, that the
mandate of the Mission, which was defined a long time ago, should be
maybe a little bit adopted and to the new environment, the new
conditions, because there are some things which we needed before, and
now something else. For example, as Mr. Uyehara also mentioned, the
fight against terrorism and organized crime.
Serbia was fortunate enough that we didn't have major terrorist
attacks. But it doesn't mean that we are not prone to that. So I think
we should work on that, preventing these things happen, although we
have learned from this New York attack that it is very difficult to
prevent such individual acts. But good cooperation and exchange of
information is very important. And I hope that the Mission will
continue its work and cooperation with the Serbian Government.
And I would like to thank you once again for organizing these
events. We have managed to really go very far in our reforms and in our
cooperation with the regional countries and partners. And it is our
goal to continue these policies of regional reconciliation, including
everybody into the EU, and connecting between our friends in political
ways, economic, and also infrastructure.
So thank you once again for organizing this. Thank you.
Mr. Hand. Thank you, Ambassador.
Somebody else from the diplomatic community like to speak? No? OK.
Well, you can always chime in later during the question-and-answer
period as well with the general audience.
Let me now open it up to anybody who would like to ask a question
of our panelists. Again, if you could start by identifying yourself and
your affiliation, and then, if you have a comment, make it very, very
brief, and then ask the question. Then let's try to keep the discussion
moving. And I'll take two questions at a time. I don't like to go to
three, because then one of them always gets forgotten. But I think if
we go to just two at a time, we can try to manage it that way.
Questioner. Thank you. My name is Austin. I'm with United
Macedonian Diaspora.
The question is, we mentioned the success of the Montenegrin
example with their recent NATO membership. I'm wondering what specific
lessons could be extrapolated from that example and applied to Serbia
or Bosnia or Macedonia? And in light of this success, could we see
maybe a sort of potential institutional momentum, if you will? Will
this kind of reignite the ambitions of the EU and NATO to look at the
Western Balkans again and refocus their integration efforts?
Thank you.
Questioner. Good morning. Alex Johnson with Open Society Policy
Center.
I want to commend you all for all of your hard work, but want to
shift to a more difficult question that I think Ambassador Pesko and
Bob started talking about and leading to this concept of the longevity
of field operations.
With the recent closure of the office in Yerevan, despite the
interest of the host government in maintaining that presence, are there
any concerns with regards to the field operations in the Balkans in
terms of their longevity?
Thank you.
Mr. Hand. Who in our panelists would like to start with either one
of those questions? Jonathan?
Amb. Moore. Well, first of all, on the issue of integration, citing
Montenegro as an example, Bosnia and Herzegovina also aspires to be a
member of the European Union and of NATO. That's been the case for over
10 years. There's a lot of domestic political debate about NATO
membership, but that's a state capacity. And it was a member of the
presidency who signed the letter 10 years ago that went to the then-
Secretary General in Brussels asking for consideration of NATO
membership. It's a very long path.
And to give sort of a short answer, I would basically say that
Montenegro is an excellent example of when you not only aspire for
membership, but you meet the criteria, you can gain membership in the
case of NATO. And in the case of the EU, they've managed to open quite
a few chapters and, I believe, close a few. You do the work and you get
the results. That's probably the best example that Montenegro would
show Bosnia and Herzegovina.
With regard to the question from our colleague from Open Society--
and thank you very much for that--with regard to our presences, I at no
point felt any pressure or concern in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I talked
about our credibility, our access and our engagement, as well as our
presence. I hope that doesn't change after today. But at no point
during my mandate then did I ever hear, ``Why are you here''? ``You
need to close.'' ``You need to go.'' There are other targets in the
international community I won't mention now who are under a lot of
pressure to change what they do or simply to leave.
But one of our strengths is not just a deep and broad mandate that
is tied to the Dayton peace accords. Many field missions don't have a
mandate with that kind of foundation; but also the fact, of course,
that our hosts, the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina and their
authorities, are very enthusiastic partners and are very glad we're
there. We're fortunate for that. Making that apply to other countries
would be a separate matter.
Mr. Hand. Jeff, I want to make sure--you can always wave your arm
and somebody will point it out to me if you want to speak--but did you
want to address these questions?
Mr. Goldstein. I am OK. Thank you.
Mr. Hand. Ambassador?
Amb. Pesko. Yes. Well, just recently we have seen a recommitment by
the European Union to advance the work on the integration path of the
whole region. I understand there was a meeting between Mogherini and
Commissioner Hahn with the foreign ministers from the region on the
margins of the U.N. General Assembly, and there was a clear message
towards that direction. And as I said also, Mr. Juncker, in his recent
state of the union speech, mentioned this, that there is a need to
reinforce work towards that direction. And this is at the same time
linked with the reinforced focus on reforms in that countries.
And, at the same time, there is an ambition to strengthen the
regional cooperation--not at the expense of the enlargement ambitions,
but in a complementary way. Let me just remind you, the Berlin process,
the Berdo/Briani process, there was a meeting in Trieste as well this
year. So we are seeing these reinvigorated efforts in the region
towards that direction.
At the same time, we are seeing bilateral issues. I mean, last year
we had some issues when it comes to Pristina-Belgrade dialogue. We have
seen some issues when it comes to the border between Montenegro and
Kosovo still debated. We have seen disputes ongoing between Croatia and
Slovenia. So let me be frank that there are these processes going on,
and there is a need for a constant focus on these parallel processes to
be facilitated by the international community.
So from my perspective, what the OSCE's role is, first of all,
focusing on this reform agenda. The more reforms being implemented and
being stabilized, the more prospects for these countries to move
forward with their integration agenda there are.
And here I also see quite broad perspective for our future work
here. As one of the actors providing the support there are some areas
where OSCE support, given its regional presence, given its local
expertise, given its longevity of presence, is perhaps more effective
than the EU assistance. Or the same applies to the U.N. and UNDP and
others. So it's also about the complementarity and synergies between
the organizations who are active in that region.
Where I see some systemic issue, of course, is that, in terms of
the future of the field operations, as I said, we need to have more
conceptual debate about it. We have now seen challenges stemming from
the Mediterranean and from the south of Europe--migration, organized
crime, of course, foreign fighters, radicalization. So this is where
the organization is also focusing on that and trying to strengthen its
capacities to deal with that. And there is a discussion about opening
OSCE's presence in Italy, for instance, to address these Mediterranean
challenges.
So I think this could be really helpful to overcome this sort of
stigma type of feeling on the side of countries who are hosting our
field operations today. This is not homework for them. It's more the
homework for those who don't have these presences. If you ask me, I
would really prefer that the OSCE is presented everywhere in the
region, maybe with a small presence, with a surge capacity to really
work on issues with the host countries where they are needed.
There is no dispute about ODIHR working with Western countries,
including here with the U.S. There was a quite robust presence here, a
lot of recommendations when it comes to the election system here, and
also engagement on the side of the U.S. But if you put, let's say,
theoretically an idea of having a full-time presence here, that's
another story. But we have to understand that these countries, after 25
years of development, including those in Central Asia, for instance,
they have their different position in the international area. They have
progress in many aspects.
So we really need to look how we could continue this inclusive and
cooperative way of working with them, and also address this balance
between those who host and those who do not host. And the discussion is
going on. And the discussion is going on. The Secretary General is
going to organize a site event on the future of the field operations
during the ministerial council. And there will be a Security Day event
next year, next spring, on the future of the field operations as well
in Vienna.
Mr. Hand. That's interesting to hear. I know we at the Helsinki
Commission have ourselves at times thought of ways of revamping the way
the OSCE does missions, perhaps to allow them to be regional so they're
not confined to borders, because in the Balkans, for example, you need
cross-border cooperation. Or perhaps to make the missions more issue-
focused so that they could go perhaps even to all OSCE countries as
needed.
Let me ask for two more questions from the audience; this gentleman
right here.
Questioner. Thank you. Meto Koloski with the United Macedonian
Diaspora. And thank you, Bob, and all the panelists; good to see some
familiar faces, particularly Jonathan and Jeff we've been in touch
with, but I haven't met in person.
And thank you for the OSCE's work, particularly something Mike
mentioned about these fines that countries have to pay after they're
taken to the European Court of Human Rights. And for many people in the
Macedonian minority in Greece and Bulgaria, they have been perfect
vehicles. However, unfortunately, Greece and Bulgaria still do not have
equal rights for Macedonian minorities in these countries, and the OSCE
has been a great platform for many of these groups to kind of advocate
for more rights and greater attention to this.
I wanted to touch on perhaps what Ambassador Pesko mentioned
regarding the law of languages in Macedonia. What specifically are you
working on?
And perhaps Jeff can touch on the role of ethnic parties and why in
the Balkans and in Macedonia we probably still have ethnic parties as
opposed to political parties on ideology. In most recent elections we
did see this crossover of minorities voting for different political
parties, but maybe you could touch more specifically on that. And
perhaps the implementation of the Ohrid Framework Agreement, since the
attention or the person responsible for this is somebody from the
ethnic Albanian bloc, and Macedonia hasn't ratified the Framework
Convention on Minority and Regional Languages. So perhaps you could
touch on that and if any efforts your office is working on to meet some
of these.
Mr. Hand. Another question?
Questioner. Thank you. My name is Martina Hrvolova. I'm a program
manager at the Center for International Private Enterprise.
I, first of all, would like to echo what Ambassador Matkovic had to
say at the beginning about the role of the Helsinki Commission in
increasing the awareness of the importance of the region in the United
States.
Second of all, the question I have for the honorable speakers
today, Bob, is whether you gentlemen believe that a violent conflict in
the Balkans is still a real possibility. And if the answer is yes, what
is the role of OSCE in mitigating such a risk?
Thank you.
Mr. Hand. OK, thank you.
Let me start with Ambassador Pesko and Jeff for the Macedonia-
specific question that was asked by Meto.
Amb. Pesko. Yes, can I start with this question first?
Mr. Hand. Sure, if you want to.
Amb. Pesko. OK, all right.
You know, I'm a director of the Conflict Prevention Centre, so our
raison d'etre is really to try to identify indicators for potential
conflicts and try to find tools how to respond early enough to those
conflicts. Let me just remind the case of Macedonia--or FYROM, as we
call it in the OSCE context--that was a textbook example where the OSCE
could be useful to address a potentially escalatory situation early
enough through the engagement with the local actors, be at that time
the government parties and the opposition parties.
I mentioned our contribution to the elections, the preparation of
the early elections, then working together on the implementation of the
recommendations, working also to get the creation of this prosecutor
office, then engaging with the chairmanship directly, who coordinated
with the European Commission and the U.S. representative in addressing
the differences between the government and the opposition. And we have
been monitoring, observing constantly the situation in the parliament,
in a way creating conducive environment for the parties to engage. And
when there was an escalation in the parliament, we immediately
responded by dispatching the special representative of the chair. The
Secretary General went there as well, trying to really engage the
parties into the dialogue and finding a way forward, which then led to
the elections.
And the results of the elections were accepted by all. That's the
most important thing. So perhaps there have been some deficiencies in
that process. But on the other hand, ODIHR noted that the elections
were democratic, were fair, and reflected the democratic will of the
population. So this gave a strong basis for further steps, creation of
the coalition government.
And also here the issue of the language law has been mentioned. I
understand that currently the law is going to be adopted, and then it
will go to the Venice Commission for their review. And I know that the
Skopje government is working very closely with the High Commissioner on
the National Minorities in addressing potential issues with that law.
What's important from our perspective is that the government clearly
stated that they would like to find a way how to reunite the country
across the ethnic divisions, to build a strong civic society. And here,
this law should be part of that vision, I think. So if you ask me, if
we can see escalation of potential conflict in Balkans, I would say
yes, we still have some ingredients in that region where we are not
still beyond the point of no return to the escalation of conflict in
situations.
However, for instance, the pressure of migration in 2015 on the
region and the way the region was able to deal with these pressures--
and we remember, there were disputes between Serbia and Croatia,
between Macedonia and Serbia--it demonstrates that the institutions are
much more stronger, resilient in being able to cope with these
pressures on their own, even without the support of international
community. So we are on the right way but--in the right track, but we
still have some time to achieve sufficient or strong enough
institutions to be able to cope with these situations. And we can have
conflict situations also in other parts of Europe. Let's be frank. The
Balkans are not excluded, you know? It's not like this. We have this
situation that's also about the participating States, to what extent
they would be ready to engage OSCE in addressing these issues together
with this multilateral structure.
Mr. Hand. OK, thank you.
Jeff, would you like to give a response?
Mr. Goldstein. Yes, let me try and respond, but I apologize in
advance. I'm getting a lot of feedback at this end. And I'm not totally
sure that I understood the question, so if my answers are a little bit
off base I apologize. I heard a question about the ethnic parties,
about the Ohrid Framework Agreement, and languages. So let me just say
a few words on that. I hope I get near the target.
Regarding the role of ethnic parties, since the conflict here in
2001 up until last year, essentially, you had four political parties in
this country, two Macedonian and two Albanian. And approximately 90
percent of the population of this country is either Macedonian or
Albanian. Essentially, each group picked among the two of their
ethnicity. Hardly surprising, I suppose, in this part of the world,
when you ask someone about how they identify themselves, they're much
more likely to come up with their ethnic group, their nationality,
rather than their citizenship. That's changed a little bit here now.
We'll have to see how long the phenomenon continues, but it has now
lasted through two electoral cycles. So I think it's an open question
about whether we're heading towards maybe some breakdown of this very
rigid divide in which you had essentially two parallel but not touching
political processes in the country.
On the Ohrid Framework Agreement, of course, a large part of our
mandate is to work on helping with implementation of the agreement. I
think there has been some progress. I think there is a lot of work to
do, particularly on issues such as inclusivity. I think one of the real
challenges this country faces is the fact that one of the more
important provisions of the Ohrid Agreement was that all children
should have the ability to study in their native languages. The way
that's been implemented over the last 16 years or so has resulted in
the fact that we now have a generation of people who have grown up
somewhat self-segregated from each other. And so one of the issues that
we're working very hard on is greater inclusivity or integration.
Finally, the law on languages. Very briefly, this is a law that has
caused some controversy here. Of course, a very important part of the
Ohrid Framework Agreement, is assuring the use of languages of all of
the ethnic groups here, with greater or lesser remit depending on the
size of the group. The government has promised that once passed by
parliament, the law will go to the Venice Commission and they will fix
any problems that this Commission recognizes with it. So we're
expecting that to move ahead very shortly now that the elections are
over. And hopefully, again, this will have a positive outcome.
Mr. Hand. OK.
Jonathan, would you like to make a comment?
Amb. Moore. Quickly. I'll be very brief on the issue of ethnic
parties. To discuss that with reference to Bosnia and Herzegovina would
take far more time than anybody living I think has. I am pleased that
here in the front row we have the founders of one of the important
parties that's tried very hard to have non-ethnic politics in Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Reuf Bajrovic. But I'll leave that issue aside. Most
parties in Bosnia, unfortunately, are very ethnic. And in fact, ethnic
politics are used to divide the country.
However, to answer Ms. Hrvolova's question, is violent conflict a
possibility? Yes, of course, I suppose anywhere, any time--New York
yesterday, in that sense. But cross-border conflict I don't think is a
threat in the Balkans. It's not the early 1990s in Belgrade, Zagreb,
Sarajevo. Yes, they have difficulties in their bilateral relationships,
but the prospect of a conflict, anything like happened 20 years ago and
earlier, I don't see that.
However, internally, because of the growing threat of violent
extremism, this is something we have to pay a lot of attention to. And
this is exactly why what CIPE is doing to help bring societies and
people and entrepreneurs together, what OSCE Mission on the ground can
do with regard to that to bring attention to local communities is so
important. The Austrian Chairmanship-In-Office this year, under the
leadership of Sebastian Kurz, brought in a special representative on
CVE, Professor Peter Neumann. And he educated a lot of people on the
fact that when you have a terrorist attack, you shouldn't just be
wondering what the motives of the terrorists were and what the
antecedents were, but what are the consequences. And in this particular
case, this is our big concern of Bosnia and Herzegovina, that one
attack in one place in a divided community can really tear the country
apart. So keeping the country stitched together and avoiding violent
conflict within the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a big focus
for the Mission because, exactly, we do fear the possibility of
something spinning out of control.
Thank you.
Mr. Hand. OK, we had a question over here in the middle.
Questioner. Thank you. Ardita Dunellari with Voice of America.
Recently the deputy head of the European Parliament put the blame
on the Kosovo authorities for not pushing ahead with the border issue
with Montenegro and blaming the Kosovo authorities that they're holding
hostage the issue of visa liberalization. Do you agree with Ms.
Lunacek's assessment? And if so, what is OSCE doing, if they can do
anything at all, to help the process along as it's not just the
political issue, but it's holding hostage also economic advancement and
a lot of the citizens' rights?
And also, I wanted to pick up on the point that you were making
about a different question on holding these communities together and
hopefully preventing any conflict in the future. These societies, as
much as the international structures and institutions, are trying to
bring human rights to these very multiethnic societies. It seems that
the issue of self-imposed segregation is happening. We have schools
that are operating on one language versus a multilingual environment
that these countries have. And on the other hand, while you mention
that there is an effort to overcome this self-segregation, is there any
effort being put into making these countries self-sufficient? Right now
these multitudes of schools and institutions that operate among
multilanguages which are very expensive, very cumbersome, are being
supported by the international community. Is there any effort for a
future when these countries will be weaned out and need to support this
cumbersome system that's been created?
Thank you.
Mr. Hand. OK. And then we had one question over here.
Questioner. Hi, I'm Marlena Casey. I'm a Foreign Service Officer
with the State Department heading out to Sarajevo with some of my
colleagues here.
Thank you so much for reviewing the domestic issues that are
occurring in each country and the programmatic focus for each domestic
issue, and in some case cross-border issues.
Ambassador Pesko, you raised regional challenges, cross-border
challenges, transnational organized crime, foreign fighters, migration,
and so on. I'm wondering if the OSCE has a regional programmatic
approach to these regional challenges, particularly because you
mentioned a broad integration and broad regional agenda. I'm wondering
if the way we're addressing it, or the OSCE addresses, programmatically
matches those cross-border challenges.
Thank you.
Mr. Goldstein. Maybe I can give a quick answer to the first
question, regarding holding the community together. You know, this
country or this region does have a history of intercommunal violence.
But I have to say that I have been actually pleasantly surprised here
by the maturity of the population.
So, in 2015, it is still not completely clear what happened, but
there was a firefight in the town of Kumanovo between a group of armed
ethnic Albanians, many of them from Kosovo, and the police. There was
some belief that this was an effort to somehow spark interethnic
conflict. There was also some pretty significant, harsh rhetoric on
ethnic lines over the course of the crisis here in the winter. And it
became very apparent that if this was intended to try and goad the
population into intercommunal violence, it was failing.
I think a lot of people in this part of the world have seen what
intercommunal violence looks like and don't want any part of it
anymore. And I think a lot of what we're doing is trying to build that
cohesion together. There are certainly problems here. There are
certainly potential flashpoints. But I don't think, at the same time,
that we should underestimate the degree to which people here want to
get on with their lives and move beyond intercommunal conflict.
On the question about self-segregation and trying to make this more
sustainable--again, I can only speak for this country, but I am not
aware of large amounts of money going into things like education in
this country. In fact, up until recently, this country has had very
little foreign debt. It's not a huge aid recipient. Now, again, I'm
only speaking about the country where I am right now, but I'm not quite
sure I agree with the premise of the question, that somehow the
international community is supporting these multiethnic institutions
that the countries couldn't afford on their own. I'm not sure that's
the case here.
Mr. Hand. OK. Thank you, Jeff.
Jonathan, would you----
Amb. Moore. Quickly again, if I may, I would be a little stronger
than Jeff. The international community is not supporting in that sense.
Certainly, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, divided education, it is quite
the contrary: We're trying to put the schools together. You made
exactly the point. They're very expensive when you have multiple
schools, different textbooks and staff.
At the same time, the right to education in your language is
something that exists in a lot of EU member states where there are
ethnic populations. From the British ambassador in Sarajevo I learned
about the example of Northern Ireland, where there are very separate
Protestant schools and Catholic schools, where the overall focus is on
quality, education. You can't force all the kids together and ignore
their right for instruction in their language. But at the same time,
certainly we're not spending energy to divide them in education. The
high school students in Jajce are a wonderful example of that.
Responding to the question from the Foreign Service colleague about
regional efforts and cross-border challenges, honestly--maybe I'll be
more blunt than Marcel could be--there is a broad region. We talk about
the Western Balkans. Croatia does not consider itself to be part of the
Western Balkans but pays a lot of attention to the region. It's a good
beacon because it completed the accession process, joining both NATO
and EU. And yet, we have no OSCE Mission in Croatia anymore, so
regional cooperation with Croatia is not exactly a role for the Mission
to take on.
At the same time, because of good professional contacts, I was able
to have meetings in Zagreb on a number of occasions and bring some
positive attention to what was actually going on in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, as opposed to what was being reported in the press in
Zagreb, and the opinion of some of the more senior leaders there. So,
in comparison, for example, to the team in Serbia, where we have a
Mission--and Mike and I got together frequently in Belgrade and with
his boss, the current head of Mission and the previous head of
Mission--we were able to interact a lot with other countries in the
region. Our writ and our ability to be flexible is somewhat constrained
within the framework of the national mandates we have. But it does give
us a perspective. And of course, we share those ideas with bilateral
embassies in capitals.
Mr. Uyehara. I mentioned the fact that, based on the Follow Us
initiative of our partnership with the OSCE Mission in Kosovo, we are
planning to have this regional conference based in Belgrade bringing
people together. And so the OSCE participating State delegations have
encouraged the missions in the Balkans to work more closely together.
And two examples that we cite is the regional housing program, where we
work with, I think, it's Bosnia and Herzegovina--right?--and Croatia,
Montenegro, and use funds from the European Union as well as the State
Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration to build
housing for refugees from the Bosnian conflict in the areas where
they've been displaced. So that's a regional approach to an issue where
we work with other missions.
And then one of the other sort of regional initiatives that we like
to cite is a cooperative venture to develop this serious organized
crime threat assessment, which is an assessment that's required by
Interpol and Europol as well. It requires a certain degree of
sophistication, and we work with the missions in Montenegro and in
Macedonia together in order to get the police and the ministries of
interior in these three countries to reach that particular capacity. So
the OSCE Missions in areas where there are sort of common objectives do
work together. For instance, when Jeff was describing his mission's new
priorities, it seemed to me that there would be areas where we could
cooperate as well.
Amb. Pesko. Yes, on this regional cooperation, I mentioned some of
these processes--Berlin process, Berdo/Briani process--so this is
ongoing. And we see OSCE's role as a complementary role to that. One of
the areas where I see room for improvement is regional trade, for
instance, and regional trade and investment, also transport, so the
whole connectivity issue. And this is where our Office for Economic and
Environmental Cooperation is very much involved.
And we have also Transnational Threats Department in the
secretariat who are dealing with the CVE issues, so organizing regional
conferences. We had conferences in Tirana, for instance, on tolerance
and foreign fighters. We also pursued the creation of the network of
the youth representatives in the region. We have such regional offices
of the youth representatives now nested in our mission in Tirana. So
there are these sort of attempts to do more in that area. But as it was
said, we don't have a Western Balkan mission, right? So we have
separate missions. And what we do, we are trying to engage heads of
missions to really get together and identify areas where it provides an
added value.
You know, I always use the example of how we work on borders in the
respective countries, in Macedonia, in Serbia, where I think that the
fact that the region was able to cope with these migratory flows was
also a result of our long-term engagement in strengthening border
management capabilities across the region as well.
Another area is the whole security sector, reform and governance.
That's also a part where we are trying to establish high-level
standards in managing the democratic oversight of the armed forces
pursuing the modernization of policing as well. I mean, we are building
up here a sort of regional approach. It's not that we have a different
approach in Bosnia from the ones in Montenegro or Macedonia. But more
can be done. And as I identified, it's mainly in that area of organized
crime, tolerance, interfaith cooperation. Those are the areas where we
see room for improvements.
On Kosovo, what we have seen recently in Western Balkans was the
crisis of parliamentarism. We have not had for some time functioning
parliaments in Pristina before the elections. We have seen these
functions of parliament in Skopje during this two years' crisis. We've
seen still the boycotting of parliament by some parties in Montenegro
as well.
And of course, the borders, those are purely bilateral issues. This
is not for the OSCE to engage directly in some sort of mediatory role
here. But our interests are that the parliaments are working in a
democratic way, that there is a participation in that processes. And
unfortunately, this border issue has become a hostage of that
dysfunctionality on both sides for some time.
At the same time, let me remind you that the OSCE has facilitated
series of elections in Kosovo, both Serbian elections, most recently,
the presidential elections, so that we created an environment and
structures which allowed to conduct these elections in Kosovo in an
orderly way, and collect the ballots and basically cover the whole
area.
Just recently, we also participated in the support of the
parliamentary elections in Kosovo as well. So what I'm saying is that
what we are more focused on is the strengthening of functioning
democratic institutions, as opposed to dealing with a concrete issue of
the borders, so that the sides are able to address these issues
bilaterally, feeling comfortable and not instrumentalizing this issue
in their internal political discourse.
Unfortunately, that's not yet the situation. While this issue of
the visa liberalization for the citizens of Kosovo is an issue, this is
something which is on the agenda of the European Union, of course. And
from our perspective, we are very much supportive of that, as we
believe that there should be equal treatment of all citizens in that
region. On the other hand, I can understand the political logic of this
requirement. There is a pressure on Kosovo's side and the parliament
particularly, and all political parties to take the political
responsibility and agree on their borders.
Mr. Hand. Thank you.
Let me just ask the final question and then we'll close the
briefing. We're a little bit over two hours now already. There's so
much to discuss.
There are two issues that got mentioned very briefly and I would
like to see if we can have a little bit of elaboration upon them, as
the issues are important to the Helsinki Commission. One is trafficking
in persons. The countries of the Balkans, according to the United
States State Department, are all tier-two countries, meaning that
they're not meeting the requirements, although they're striving to do
so. Two of the countries are on tier-two watch list--Serbia and
Montenegro--because there seems to be some negative trends in those
countries. Of course, it touches on rule of law issues. The migration
issue has come up in terms of trafficking, et cetera. I was wondering
if the three former or current members of the Mission could quickly
speak about what OSCE activity is in regard to trafficking in persons.
And then along the same lines, another very important interest to
the Helsinki Commission is the plight of Roma--Romani communities in
the Balkans, and actually throughout Europe. There was a recent
European Roma Rights Center report that talked about statelessness
among Roma as an intergenerational problem in the Balkans. If any of
you could just give a brief comment about what might be done
specifically on the statelessness issue for Roma, or more generally
your engagement with Romani communities in the countries where you had
served or are currently serving.
Who would like to go first?
Mr. Goldstein. OK, well, I was actually just this morning
addressing a regional workshop on undocumented Roma that we organized
together with the Ministry of Labor here. We do a lot of work on two
aspects of the situation of Roma here.
One is undocumented persons. There are still several hundred people
in this country, both people who were never documented after the
collapse of Yugoslavia and people who came over as part of the wave of
refugees from Kosovo. The estimates are somewhere between 900 and 1,500
people without documentation. The conference I was at was basically
bringing together responsible officials from several countries in the
region to discuss steps moving forward on this. We have commissioned a
couple of expert studies this year that have just been delivered to the
Ministry of Labor.
The other issue where we're just starting to get involved in is the
question of Roma street children and what can be done to try and get
more of them back into the education system. And again here, we have
hired an expert on the issue to draft a paper that's just been provided
to our host officials.
On trafficking, we take a multidimensional approach to this. We
work on it from the human dimension point of view in a lot of our work
with what we actually call school safety groups that work on a lot of
issues, everything from the threat of trafficking, to bullying, to
extremism with high school students. We also work on it in our work
with the police largely in terms of helping them to deal with the
trafficking elements that have been part of the migration flow that
swamped this country two years ago, and which still continues to
trickle through. So we work on both trying to increase public awareness
of the issue, and capacity of the authorities working together with
civil society to fight against trafficking.
Mr. Uyehara. With regard to the trafficking in persons, what I
understand is the OSCE Mission two or three years ago phased out its
direct support in that area. We did provide a briefing to a
delegation--I think it was from Kazakhstan--that was interested in sort
of seeing the Serbian example, because I guess the Serbian
infrastructure is fairly well developed, and it was on a study tour,
and so then they came by and stopped with the OSCE Mission as well to
get a briefing about our activities more broadly speaking.
And most recently, the only sort of intersection that I'm aware of
where we had addressed an issue that touched on trafficking in persons
was the promotion of the principle with the Ministry of Justice on the
non-punishment principle for victims of trafficking. It's my impression
that that has been established in law, and so then I would assume--this
was before my arrival at the Mission--that the Mission assessed its
support provided for trafficking in persons, and concluded that with
regard to sort of the structure of civil society organizations, NGOs
providing support to the victims, as well as the structure of laws and
the capability of the police with regard to enforcement, were all, from
our perspective, adequate in that there's not that much that we could
do on the subject. We moved on.
And then, with regard to Roma, until last year in fact, we had
several multimillion euro extra-budgetary projects directed towards
Roma integration. I think it was in an order of 7 million euros over a
period of four years or so, one of them funded by the Swedish
Government, the other funded by the European Union. And this European
Union-funded project was initially called the Technical Assistance to
Roma Integration and then it was European Support for Roma
Integration--and I would say, frankly speaking, partly driven by German
concerns about the fact that Roma were habitually flying to Germany,
claiming asylum and enjoying the benefits provided asylees and then
returning and doing this repeatedly. And they wanted to sort of reduce
that activity, and one way to do that was to improve the conditions for
Roma in Serbia.
And this multimillion-dollar project had several different lines of
activity. It included purchasing equipment as incentives for small
companies that agreed to hire Roma. And in one case, as I understand
it, we bought a tanning bed for a beauty salon that had hired some
Roma. Providing tutoring assistance, and that we established these
mobile teams with various municipalities where the mobile teams brought
together a pedagogical assistant, a tutor, a community health person
and a social worker and a local government representative, and we
bought vehicles for them so that they could go around to the various
Roma communities. That project ended last year, and we had hopes that
we would be able to then be selected for a successor, but the European
Union contracting procedures essentially disallowed the OSCE Mission
based on some obscure accounting rules that we're trying to work out
with the Secretariat now so that we can compete in the future. And so
then our activities with regard to the Roma community have been ramped
down. We have a unit that still uses core budgetary funds to provide
some assistance, but that's pretty selective and not at the scale as
before.
Thank you.
Amb. Moore. Well, first of all, I have to take this opportunity
here at the Helsinki Commission to praise your Co-Chair, Congressman
Chris Smith, who has really been a leader for decades on the issue of
trafficking in persons, or trafficking in human beings, as OSCE calls
it. It is part of our Mission activities. The Mission does not have the
lead, and the international community works very closely with bilateral
embassies and the EU delegation. It does tie into the rule of law and
security sector governance and reform programs that the Mission has.
With regard to Roma, the Mission has had some outstanding young
Romani interns, has a number of Roma employees, including Dervo Sejdic,
well-known to the world as half of the Sejdic/Finci case in the
European Court of Human Rights against the Dayton Constitution, which
they won and still needs to be resolved.
And we've also been involved directly with EU efforts to provide
Roma housing. There are good ways and bad ways of doing that, and I'm
very pleased that there's some communities that have done that
extremely well, like Kakanj, for example, which is just half an hour or
so from Sarajevo.
It's also a clear issue for education. A lot of young Roma are
denied the chance to go to school. Even beginning to talk about
instruction in their language is a very early topic. It is something
where the Mission is deeply engaged.
Mr. Hand. All right. Thank you. At this point, I'd like to close
the briefing. We're 15 minutes over and into our lunch time. I would
just say that I, myself, had actually served on what was then a CSCE,
now OSCE, Mission, way back in 1993. At the same time that the Mission
to Skopje was founded, so was one to Kosovo, the Sandzak and Vojvodina,
in Serbia and Montenegro, which were in a federal Yugoslav State at the
time. And I served in Novi Pazar, in the Sandzak, between Bosnia and
Kosovo, not necessarily the most pleasant place to be when there's war
raging right next door, dealing with paramilitaries, as well as
refugees and a whole host of things.
But what impresses me so much about the OSCE is how it's advanced
its capabilities in the field. I had a Danish military colleague who
had to fly back to Copenhagen and drive back with his own 1980s Fiat
because we only had one vehicle that somebody at the Conflict
Prevention Centre went out and bought with a credit card and it needed
servicing, and it was very much an effort trying to keep things patched
together. But yet we got some things done. And now that we have a
better infrastructure in the OSCE with its institutionalization, every
time I go to the countries in the region, I'm impressed how many OSCE
vehicles are moving around, how visible the OSCE is, and how it is
trying to have an impact. I think it's very good and it speaks well of
the organization.
And I would also say that my opportunities, which continue, to meet
with various Americans who are seconded to the Mission, like the
panelists we have here with us today, shows the degree of support to
which the United States gives to these missions. And I hope that that
really continues despite the budgetary problems we may have. I also
hope that all of our European countries will also rally around the OSCE
flag to be able to get some things done.
Finally, since there's a lot of thanks and praise for the Helsinki
Commission, I'd like to thank our front office administrator Jordan
Warlick, who's over advocating free media in Vienna right now, for
nevertheless getting us the room and a lot of the logistics that made
this happen.
I'd like to thank Stacy Hope, our communications director--please
raise your hand--who makes sure that we get out on Facebook and other
things that I'm still trying to understand myself, what we do, but that
gets us greater exposure.
And if the Helsinki Commission is able to do some of the positive
things that we were praised for today, it's because of our interns. And
we have a merry band of interns with us today who really helped make
this happen. Our lead intern in particular, Woody Atwood, I'd like to
thank for making this connection with Skopje happen with Jeff. The only
thing that Woody could have done to make this better would have been to
push me aside and get out of his way so that he could get more things
done. I want to thank him also for working with me in organizing all of
this. It really went well.
And hopefully, we can have more discussion about what the OSCE can
do in the Balkans and perhaps in other regions, Central Asia, the
Caucasus, where it has a definite role to play in the future, when and
if Ambassador Pesko returns to Washington at some point, or some other
OSCE official.
And until that time, let me wish you all the best. And I hope that
you enjoyed the briefing, and keep in touch.
Thank you. [Applause.]
[Whereupon, at 12:16 p.m., the briefing ended.]
A P P E N D I X
=======================================================================
2016 ended on a positive note here in Skopje. After two false
starts earlier in the year, parliamentary elections called in an effort
to overcome the political crisis that had gripped the country for two
years were finally held and judged to be largely free and fair. The
crisis began when the leader of the opposition published transcripts of
a large number of illegally recorded phone conversations in which
senior government and ruling party officials discussed a variety of
allegedly illegal activities. With the assistance of representatives of
the international community, the country's four largest political
parties reached the so-called Przino agreement in 2015, calling for
early elections with special protections to ensure they would be fair,
and also the creation of the Special Prosecutor's Office (SPO) to
investigate potential illegalities contained in the wiretaps.
I would like to call your attention to two major positives from
last December's elections:
1. For perhaps the first time in the country's history a major
political party sought to reach out across ethnic
lines and succeeded; some tens of thousands of
ethnic Albanians voted for the Social Democratic
party--SDSM.
2. In addition, turnout was up significantly over the elections of
2014, rising by more than 6%, indicating that the
citizenry both cared about the political situation
and believed that the elections could have a
positive impact.
The elections produced a very close result. The conservative party,
VMRO, which had been the senior party in governing coalitions since
2006, won 51 seats, while SDSM won 49. The largest Albanian party, DUI,
which had been in coalition with VMRO since 2008, registered a major
decline in support, as large numbers of ethnic Albanians voted not only
for SDSM, but also for two new forces on the ethnic-Albanian political
scene, the Alliance for Albanians and BESA. Nevertheless, DUI's 10
seats would have been enough to re-create the previous coalition with a
one-seat majority in the 120-seat parliament.
Following the elections, President Ivanov gave VMRO leader Nikola
Gruevski the first mandate to try to form a new governing coalition.
VMRO began negotiations with DUI and the two parties reportedly came
close to reaching a new coalition agreement. Many in DUI, however,
believed that the party's poor showing in the elections was the result
of unhappiness among traditional supporters with DUI's long-term
partnership with VMRO, which many Albanians had come to see as corrupt
and ethnically chauvinistic. In the end, VMRO and DUI were unable to
finalize an agreement.
As leader of the second largest party in parliament, Zoran Zaev of
SDSM then claimed the right to receive the next mandate from President
Ivanov to seek to put together a governing majority. Ivanov refused,
however, stating that he believed Zaev was willing to negotiate with
the ethnic-Albanian parties on the basis of a policy document Ivanov
claimed was drafted in Albania and presented a threat to the country's
sovereignty and security. The Albanian parties denied that this
document was drafted by outsiders, saying that it represented an
agreement among the Albanian parties based on their own platforms and
did not jeopardize the unitary character of the country or refer to any
form of federalization or division of the country.
This provoked a tense constitutional crisis. VMRO engaged in a
months' long filibuster in parliament to prevent the election of a new
Speaker while pro-VMRO groups held daily protest marches in Skopje and
other major cities. Although Zaev had the support of DUI and the
Alliance for Albanians, giving him a two-seat majority in parliament,
the political situation was essentially deadlocked. Throughout the
winter, state authorities also carried out a campaign of pressure
against some of the country's most prominent civil society
organization, including financial inspections that the groups claimed
were politically motivated. The campaign was accompanied by harsh,
nationalistic rhetoric from VMRO officials and allies against what they
called ``Sorosoids,'' who they claimed had been plotting against VMRO.
The Special Prosecutor, meanwhile, faced significant resistance from
the judiciary and some parts of the Executive, slowing the effort to
hold perpetrators accountable for any criminal activity revealed in the
wiretaps.
On April 27, MPs from SDSM, DUI, and the Alliance stayed on in the
parliament building after the normal close of business and elected
DUI's Talat Xhaferi as Speaker, making him the first ethnic Albanian to
occupy one of the state's three highest official positions (the others
being President and Prime Minister). The election took place just as
the daily pro-VMRO protest march was reaching the parliament and a mob
of several hundred broke into the building, assaulting leading members
of the new coalition and journalists. The police responded in a
decisive manner only after a significant delay, eventually rescuing the
trapped deputies and clearing the mob from the building. Some VMRO MPs
are under investigation for allegedly opening the doors of parliament
to allow the protesters in; other VMRO deputies, meanwhile, tried to
protect fellow MPs from other parties.
Following the violence, President Ivanov relented and granted Zoran
Zaev the mandate to try to form a governing coalition. After the
successful conclusion of these negotiations, a government composed of
SDSM, DUI and the Alliance for Albanians was finally formed at the end
of May.
The new government announced an ambitious series of domestic
reforms, with specific goals to be achieved in three, six and nine
months, and launched a campaign to improve relations with the country's
neighbors. Symbolically, the new Foreign Minister's first foreign visit
was to Athens, where he declared a desire to work to improve relations
and pave the way for progress towards resolving the dispute with Greece
over the country's name. The new government also rapidly finalized and
signed an agreement on good neighborly relations with Bulgaria. These
domestic and international initiatives are all aimed towards achieving
the government's strategic goal of re-opening the country's integration
into European and Euro-Atlantic structures.
Last month the country held municipal elections. In unprecedented
fashion, SDSM and DUI reached an agreement before the first round of
elections to support each other's candidates in selected localities,
which seems to have bolstered both parties' results. The main story of
the first round, however, was VMRO's poor showing in its first
elections as an opposition party in more than a decade, as the party
received 25% fewer votes than it did last December. SDSM candidates won
mayoral elections in Skopje and other large cities with an ethnic
Macedonian majority, and also won in a number of smaller, rural
municipalities where VMRO had been dominant. While the number of voters
supporting DUI increased only slightly from December, with SDSM support
and facing multiple competitors, DUI candidates reached the runoff
phase in all four of the largest ethnic-Albanian majority
municipalities.
Leading up to the second round, which took place this past Sunday,
Prime Minister Zaev actively campaigned not only for SDSM candidates
but, in another first, for some DUI candidates as well. Meanwhile, the
Alliance and BESA entered into a coalition for the second round in
municipalities where one or the other faced off with DUI.
According to preliminary results, in the second round SDSM
continued its landslide, with the party's candidates beating those of
VMRO in 17 of 19 mayoral runoffs. DUI also won most of the runoffs in
which its candidates ran, although the Alliance won in one important
municipality.
The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights'
(ODIHR) election observation mission concluded preliminarily that the
first round of elections was held in a competitive environment, with
generally unbiased coverage by the media, and was generally well
administered. ODIHR did, however, find some credible allegations of
vote-buying and pressure on voters.
Following the second round, VMRO leader Gruevski denounced the
elections as unfair and said his party would refuse to recognize the
results. In its preliminary assessment of the second round, ODIHR
stated that the elections were competitive and that ``respect for
fundamental freedoms contributed towards the conduct of democratic
elections,'' while also noting reports of ``isolated cases of misuse of
administrative resources and vote-buying.''
While the local elections have roiled the political scene, and some
suggest that the Alliance may now leave the national governing
coalition, it appears that SDSM and DUI will have no problem in finding
the votes to maintain a majority in parliament.
Let me turn now to the role of the OSCE, and particularly the OSCE
Mission to Skopje over the last year. During the tense days of the
winter, the OSCE urged all sides to find a peaceful, constitutional
resolution to the crisis, including through high-level visits to Skopje
by the Secretary General and a Special Representative of the Austrian
Chairmanship. For our part, the Mission closely monitored the situation
on the ground, particularly the developing political conflict, the
protests and the campaign against CSOs.
With the advent of the new government, the Mission has turned its
focus to coordinating with the new authorities on how best we can
support the reform process, in line with our mandate and our host
country's OSCE commitments. The mandate of the OSCE Mission to Skopje
consists of three elements:
1. Support for implementation of the Ohrid Framework Agreement (OFA),
which brought an end to the inter-ethnic conflict
of 2001;
2. Advancing constructive inter-ethnic relations; and
3. Monitoring and providing early warning on security-related
developments.
As Foreign Minister Dimitrov told the Permanent Council two weeks
ago, among the government's top priorities are reforms in the areas of
the rule of law, law enforcement, the electoral system, freedom of
expression and the media, and the role of parliament, as well as
further implementation of the OFA. We have put together our plans for
2018, which remain subject to approval of our budget proposal by the
participating States, with these priorities fully in mind.
The Mission will keep its focus on building cohesive inter-ethnic
relations, with a particular emphasis on the areas of education and
youth. We will continue to support decentralization and public
administration reform, with a focus on enhancing institutional
capacities at the central and local levels, increasing adherence to
democratic governance principles, and further improving the capacity to
administer free and fair elections.
The Mission will maintain its early warning capacity through our
field presence and mobile teams, which are a unique asset among
international actors working in the country.
We will also continue our long-term work in the areas of tolerance
and non-discrimination, hate speech and hate crime. The Mission will
support the government in its efforts to implement reforms to improve
the rule of law and will seek to reinvigorate our co-operation with the
Judicial and Prosecutorial Councils, particularly in relation to the
system of appointments, evaluation and dismissals in the judiciary. We
will also focus on transparency and access to justice. The Mission will
continue to monitor high-profile court cases, including those with the
potential to inflame inter-ethnic tensions and those raised by the
Special Prosecutor.
Historically, a major part of the Mission's work has been, and will
continue to be, supporting implementation of democratic policing
principles and further strengthening police professionalization,
including improving accountability, transparency and policing skills.
We will continue to provide support and expertise to address trans-
national threats, including violent extremism, organized crime, and
issues surrounding illegal migration, such as trafficking in human
beings.
We hope to add two new streams of work in the coming year,
providing support for the parliament to develop its oversight capacity
and accountability mechanisms, and promoting freedom of the media, with
a focus on increasing the safety of journalists and improving media
literacy.
Later this month, the Mission, which was the first OSCE field
operation, will celebrate its 25th anniversary. We look forward to year
26 as an opportunity, working with our hosts and the OSCE institutions,
and in coordination with other international organizations and
governments, to support positive change in the country. The tools of
the OSCE have demonstrated their effectiveness in assisting the country
during the recent crisis, and remain relevant to its democratic
development, stability and security, as well as that of the region.
I am deeply grateful to Helsinki Commission Co-Chairs Wicker and
Smith, Commission members, and staff for the honor of addressing the
topic of OSCE field operations in the Western Balkans, and for your
continued focus on the region. Thank you again for your important May
2016 hearing on combating corruption in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
I should note that the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina has
been in the hands of my successor, fellow American diplomat Bruce
Berton, since the beginning of September. As requested by the
Commission, my remarks are only based on my three-year tenure there.
The views I express here are my own, and not necessarily those of the
U.S. Government. I am not appearing here in my capacity as a US Foreign
Service Officer.
The OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, with an extensive
network of nine offices throughout the country and 320 dedicated
professional staff, works every day with people in local communities as
well as the most senior political leaders--and everywhere in between--
to help keep the peace, protect fundamental rights, ensure the rule of
law, and build prosperity.
The framework for OSCE activities is grounded in the 1995 Dayton
Peace Accords. Dayton and the constitution contained in it continue to
serve as a key foundation for Bosnia and Herzegovina and its citizens.
The Dayton Accords brought the OSCE to Bosnia and Herzegovina, giving
the Mission a special role in conducting and observing the elections.
The Mission's role has evolved. The Central Election Commission took on
the responsibility of running elections in 2002. With the goal of
helping the country achieve its OSCE commitments and integration
aspirations, the Mission has used its diverse and active field presence
to engage in a variety of areas, seeking and keeping very close ties
with institutions, organizations, and individuals at all levels of
society.
The Mission's work encompasses OSCE's three dimensions--the
politico-military, economic and environmental, and human dimensions--
with the assistance and guidance of the annual Chairmanships-in-Office,
the Secretariat, and other institutions, including the Parliamentary
Assembly and this Commission. Its international partners include the
Office of the High Representative, the United Nations, the European
Union, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,
the Council of Europe, and bilateral embassies. The Mission's work is
expertly facilitated by strong media and policy planning teams, who
advance and promote programmatic work in the areas of education, human
rights, security cooperation, democratic governance, and the rule of
law.
Recalling the Mission's successful efforts and impact during my
mandate, I would like to focus on three main areas: education; rule of
law; and countering violent extremism.
Education
Within the international community, the Mission has the lead for
education. The children of Bosnia and Herzegovina will only prosper if
they have quality education: they need the skills, knowledge, and
judgment to succeed in a modern and increasingly diverse world. Quality
education requires well-trained teachers, professional administrators,
effective curricula, up-to-date materials, safe conditions, and an
ethnic and religiously inclusive environment.
Ethnic interaction is a vital element of the learning process. In
the aftermath of the war, it is a reality that many people in Bosnia
and Herzegovina define their identities by their language and religion.
This does not justify ethnic segregation. Segregated schools in three
Federation cantons are an obstacle. Discrimination by education
authorities in Republika Srpska against the Bosnian language is a
comparatively new and as-yet unsolved problem. A broader complication
is the fact that that numerous jurisdictions have distinct and separate
responsibilities for education. Despite these factors, there are
communities where the Mission found and encouraged examples of success;
where diversity, tolerance, respect, and vision have led to improved
social and educational conditions. Religious communities have also
played a very positive part in these efforts.
A concrete example of the Mission's work was its immediate response
to the secondary school students in Jajce, who joined forces in the
summer of 2016 to block a new segregated school. With the OSCE Mission
leading the efforts by the international community, we engaged both
publicly and privately over months and at multiple levels to prevent
the first new case of segregation in the country since 2002. The story
gained national and international attention. While it is important to
keep watching the matter, working together we convinced the authorities
to make other steps instead. The ultimate credit goes of course to the
students themselves, who showed incredible tolerance, maturity, and
commitment to a common future.
Rule of Law
The cooperation of victims and witnesses is critically important
for the successful prosecution of war crimes. The OSCE Mission to BiH
plays an established role in this field, with the full support of the
country's judiciary, as well as the victims and survivors, who in far
too many cases have been denied justice for over 20 years.
Years of proven and effective relationships with judges and
prosecutors and its professional expertise equip the Mission for
engagement in other areas as well, including the prosecution of hate
crimes. Separately, the Mission is a partner in efforts to combat
trafficking in persons, and during my tenure expanded its capacity to
fight corruption, in a project funded by the U.S. Government.
In June 2016, the Mission released a detailed, hard-hitting
analytical report on the state-level processing of war crimes, where
there had been a number of deficiencies. The analysis was hailed for
its insight and practical recommendations. Again, the Mission brought
about concrete results: the recommendations are indeed being
implemented.
Combating Violent Extremism
Bosnia and Herzegovina has seen four terrorist attacks over the
past seven years, resulting in the deaths of two soldiers and two
policemen, as well as the wounding of a third policeman in the October
2011 attack on the U.S. Embassy. The country's authorities are working
to do what they can, but Bosnia and Herzegovina is vulnerable. Given
the deep scars left by the war, terrorist attacks could greatly damage
the stability of the country if they lead to acts of revenge and a
growing cycle of conflict.
The Mission takes advantage of its grass roots-level involvement
throughout the country to make a difference: as in other areas, we see
clear evidence of the essential role played by local communities.
Having helped establish a series of over 30 Coalitions Against Hate
across Bosnia and Herzegovina, local communities are natural allies in
building mutual respect and joint community values. These are locally-
constituted groups of individuals and NGOs dedicated to working with
each other as neighbors to emphasize common rights and build broader
respect and understanding throughout their communities. The April 2015
terrorist attack in Zvornik came as a shock to all of us. But we
learned a valuable lesson: the local coalition there, together with the
mayor and Islamic community, immediately called for calm and tolerance,
and opposed any acts of revenge.
Given that example, and building on a project funded by the U.S.
Government, the Mission integrated the fight against violent extremism
as a permanent element of its security cooperation efforts, one joined
by colleagues from all policy and programmatic areas.
The United States government has developed scenario-based, multi-
stakeholder seminars to promote collaboration and disseminate good
practices to regional, national, and community leaders. With U.S.
government support, the Bosnian Ministry of Security partnered with the
OSCE to conduct a very successful tabletop exercise in March of last
year. The event helped build international coordination and whole-of-
society collaboration. The OSCE is now following-up on the 2016 table
top exercise by implementing a youth engagement CVE dramatic production
contest, and will run TTXs at the municipal-level in 2018 to expand
security partnerships to local community leaders.
Effectiveness
While past accomplishments--such as the supervision of elections
from 1996 until 2002, and assistance with defense reform over ten years
ago--set the stage, the Mission continues to build capacities at all
levels and speak candidly about both opportunities and obstacles, the
Mission proves its effectiveness and the depth of its engagement again
and again. Particular strengths include:
The diverse, expert, motivated workforce, women and men
from across the country and many different OSCE participating States;
The large network of field offices allows for constant
outreach, flexible and tailored to practical opportunities, and builds
enduring local contacts;
The extensive media presence, fostered by a pattern of
access to the press and defense of media freedom; and
Recognition by the public that the Mission does not shy
away from difficult tasks and issues, whether at the national or local
level.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I remain very thankful to all of the colleagues at
the Mission for enhancing stability and promoting reform in Bosnia and
Herzegovina. Thank you again for the important opportunity to discuss
these issues. I look forward to your questions, and to hearing the
views of my fellow panelists.
Dear distinguished members and staff of the Helsinki Commission,
current and former colleagues of the OSCE, ladies and gentlemen,
I have worked closely with the Helsinki Commission since 2001, when
I was a Belarus Desk Officer at the Department of State, and then
continuing on during subsequent assignments at the U.S. Embassy in
Kyiv, Ukraine; as director for the office in the Bureau of Democracy,
Human Rights, and Labor covering the European and Eurasian region; and
most recently as the Deputy Head of the OSCE Mission to Serbia. During
these assignments, I have become increasingly more impressed with the
role played by the Helsinki Commission, a unique institution drawing
together the Executive and Legislative branches and bringing together
the Senate and House of Representatives from both sides of the aisle.
The Helsinki Commission does wonderful work to highlight the human
rights situation within the OSCE region and to draw attention to the
work of the OSCE.
As the Deputy Head of the OSCE Mission, I traveled widely through
Serbia, and took the opportunity, using my connection with the U.S.
Embassy in Belgrade, to speak at American Corners in the country on the
topic of the U.S. within the OSCE and the OSCE's role in support of
Serbia's development. Most of my audience were young, often university
students or younger, and attending my talk to have the opportunity to
hear a native English speaker. To break the ice, I would ask each
member of my audience what they already knew about the OSCE. I was
disappointed that the great majority of my audience knew nothing about
the organization beyond its name. The common answer was either ``I
don't know about the OSCE'' or that ``the OSCE promotes security and
cooperation.'' Given this level of ignorance about the role of the OSCE
in a country where the OSCE has a mission, I am grateful to the
Helsinki Commission, and particularly Bob Hand, for arranging an
opportunity to publicize and to promote knowledge of the really great
things that the OSCE, through its missions (what the OSCE refers to as
``field operations'') does, specifically in the Western Balkans.
I should first emphasize that I offer my remarks as a private
individual. I no longer have a connection to the OSCE and, while I
remain an employee of the State Department, the views I express here
are my own and not necessarily a reflection of U.S. policy, either
toward the OSCE or toward the Balkans region broadly and Serbia
specifically. That said, my observations and conclusions would probably
not differ greatly from my views expressed in Vienna during meetings
with representatives of diplomatic delegations to the OSCE or what my
former boss, Italian diplomat Andrea Orizio, might state in his annual
report to the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna.
You have already had the opportunity to hear from Jonathan Moore
and Jeff Goldstein, both of whom I have known for many years and who
are great friends of mine, so you should have drawn a general
understanding of the role of OSCE missions. Both of their countries,
however, face specific challenges regarding democratization and
governance. Serbia seems calmer, but I would draw your attention to the
role played first by Yugoslavia and then Serbia with respect to the
OSCE to underscore the importance of the work of the OSCE Mission to
Serbia.
The OSCE has its roots in the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), a series of meetings between NATO and
Warsaw Pact member countries. While a manifestation of the Cold War
confrontation, the CSCE also broadened its scope to include formally
neutral and non-aligned countries and, as an acknowledged leader of the
Non-Aligned Movement, Yugoslavia was an active participant in the CSCE
negotiations that led to the signing of the Helsinki Final Act on 30
July to 1 August 1975. Partly in recognition of Yugoslavia's important
role, the First Review Conference (formerly known as Follow-up
Meetings), was held in Belgrade from 4 October 1977 to 9 March 1978. It
provided a forum for discussion and agreement on a number of aspects of
the Helsinki process.
In subsequent years, Yugoslavia and then Serbia became a special
focus of the OSCE. On 8 July 1992, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
(FRY), later re-designated as the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro,
was suspended from participation in the OSCE (the first time and only
time to date that the OSCE employed the consensus minus one mechanism).
The decision was taken on the basis of Yugoslavia's ``clear, gross, and
uncorrected violations'' of OSCE human dimension commitments. FRY's
participation was restored only on 7 November 2000. On 14 August 1992,
the OSCE Missions of Long Duration was established for Kosovo, Sandjak,
and Vojvodina; deployed in September; and subsequently withdrew in July
1993 when Yugoslav authorities refused to sign an MOU to prolong the
mission. On 23 July 1998, the OSCE Technical Assessment Mission issued
an assessment of the deteriorating situation in FRY and, on 15 October
1998, the OSCE established the Kosovo Verification Mission, which was
closed in June 1999.
With this historical backdrop, we come to the establishment of the
OSCE Mission to Serbia, which took place with a Permanent Council
decision of 11 January 2001, just a few months after a popular movement
saw the removal of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on 6 October
2000. Unlike the Missions to Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Kosovo, the
OSCE Mission to Serbia does not have an extensive network of field
offices, but maintains just two, but important ones with respect to
protection of national minority rights. One office is located in
Bujanovac, in southern Serbia, in an area where the majority of ethnic
Albanians reside. The second is in the city of Novi Pazar, in southwest
Serbia, which has a concentration of ethnic Bosniaks.
Finally, to finish the historical narrative, I should observe that
Serbia's rehabilitation with respect to the OSCE culminated in its
holding of the 2015 OSCE Chairmanship-in-Office, during which, in my
opinion, the country acquitted its responsibilities quite well.
Like other OSCE field operations, the OSCE Mission to Serbia's
programs and activities are based on its mandate, which is part of the
decision establishing it. Thus, it is worthwhile to cite the relevant
language of the mandate here.
A subsequent Permanent Council decision 733 in June 2006 changed
the Mission's title to the Mission to Serbia upon Montenegro's
independence. The version that I will read incorporates the relevant
changes to the mandate's language. The mandate states;
``The Mission, acting in close co-operation with the Government of
the Republic of Serbia, will provide assistance and expertise to the
Serbian authorities at all levels, as well as to interested
individuals, groups and organizations, in the fields of democratization
and the protection of human rights, including the rights of persons
belonging to national minorities. In this context, and in order to
promote democratization, tolerance, the rule of law and conformity with
OSCE principles, standards and commitments, the Mission will also
assist and advise on the full implementation of legislation in areas
covered by the mandate, and monitor the proper functioning and
development of democratic institutions, processes and mechanisms. In
particular, the Mission will assist in the restructuring and training
of law enforcement agencies and the judiciary.
In addition, the Mission will provide assistance and advice in the
field of the media.
The Mission will, in close co-operation with the Office of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, provide advice and
support in order to facilitate the return of refugees to and from
neighboring countries and from other countries of residence as well as
of internally displaced persons to their homes within the territory of
the Republic of Serbia.''
The OSCE Mission's structure reflects the mandate. It has four
programmatic departments: for Democratization, for Rule of Law and
Human Rights, for Security Cooperation, and for Media. Briefly, the
OSCE Mission seeks to help Serbia build strong, independent,
accountable and effective democratic institutions. To do so, the
Mission works with government institutions, civil society and the media
in the areas of rule of law and human rights; law enforcement;
democratization; and media development. It also works with other
Missions in the region on joint projects and initiatives.
Through its programs, the OSCE Mission continues to provide added
value in its core mandated fields through advice and expertise to its
local partners to assist Serbia in becoming a rule-based, democratic
society, where professionalism, accountability and meritocracy are
deeply rooted and where the rights of every individual are protected by
an independent and effective judiciary deriving its authority from a
full separation of powers. The principles of partnership with the host
country and national ownership of accomplishments guides the Mission's
work in helping Serbia achieve full sustainability of its reform
results. Adequate buy-in from the Serbian authorities and their full
participation in the development and implementation of Mission programs
ensure that these are targeted and topical.
Internally, the Mission strives to improve inter-Departmental co-
operation, to reflect the increasingly cross-cutting nature of issues
we deal with. For example, in the field of security sector reform, the
Mission is shifting focus from a police-centered to a more
comprehensive and inclusive approach, consistent with the OSCE holistic
and systematic approach to security, linking reforms in the fields of
criminal justice system, law enforcement, democratic control and
community participation. It is also strengthening co-operation with
OSCE institutions to exchange expertise and deploy it in a mutually
reinforcing fashion, maintain a high-level of co-operation with other
field operations in the region; and engage in regional initiatives,
including in tackling trans-national threats and trafficking in human
beings through police cooperation, contributing to stability in the
Western Balkans.
The OSCE Mission to Serbia has a robust presence in the country,
with a staff of about 130 people. This puts the Mission on a par with
the EU delegation and makes it much larger than most bilateral
embassies, including those of OSCE participating States. While the OSCE
Mission comprises a mix of international and local staff, with
international staff accounting for about 20 percent of total staffing,
the OSCE Mission's particular strength is its local employees. While
the OSCE Mission's remuneration is competitive and generous, my
personal impression is that the local staff are enthusiastic in
carrying out their duties because they are, in the main, Serbian
patriots. As patriots, they believe in the OSCE Mission's work and are
deeply committed to the Mission's objective of helping Serbia to
advance politically and to overcome the legacy of the past. With their
native fluency in Serbian and their extensive networks within
government and civil society, the OSCE Mission's Serbian employees
effectively represent the OSCE Mission and enhance its reputation as a
valuable partner for Serbia.
The staffing number does include security guards and drivers, but
the bulk of the OSCE Mission's staff implements the Mission's
programming. In short, the ``tooth to tail'' ratio is quite high. The
support function, gathered in the Fund Administrtion Unit (FAU), is one
of the leanest among OSCE field operations.
My general description of the OSCE Mission's work perhaps still
remains rather general and abstract. To bring the accomplishments of
the OSCE Mission into focus, I should describe three areas of the OSCE
Mission's work--the new countering violent extremism project, the
Follow Us initiative, and its work with youth. The three descriptions
will make more concrete how the OSCE Mission is working with other OSCE
field missions and improving inter-departmental coordination
internally.
For quite some time during my assignment, I was frustrated by the
scant attention that international donors were paying to the issue of
countering violent extremism (CVE) in Serbia. Serbia had a handful of
returning foreign fighters, who might have volunteered with ISIS in
Syria, and there have been few or no cases of terrorist violence
committed in the country. The international donor attention to the
Balkans instead was focused on Kosovo and Bosnia and Hercegovina, where
there were cases of terrorist violence and real cause for concern about
the CVE potential. My argument, however, was that the CVE potential in
Serbia was not zero. There are a significant number of unemployed and
disaffected youth in Serbia, and not just among the Muslim populations
of the Albanian and Bosniak minorities. While strict Muslim
fundamentalism was gaining strength, particularly in the area in and
around Novi Pazar, in the Bosniak region of southwest Serbia,
thankfully, it had not translated into radical extremism. Nonetheless,
I would argue with various interlocutors that an ounce of prevention
was worth a pound of cure. Just because Serbia did not have a problem
now, we should carry out projects to counter violent extremism so that
we would not have a problem in the future.
Thankfully, the UK government saw an intersection with a new
funding mechanism and the CVE issue, which resulted in an offer to fund
a CVE project for the OSCE Mission to implement. We ran with the vague
UK expression of interest to develop a full-fledged project. Rather
than focusing on Muslim-majority areas, taking heed of local leaders'
concerns not to be stigmatized simply for being Muslim, we proposed a
project that was national in scope, and took into consideration all
manifestations of violent extremism, including threats from Serbian
right-wing nationalism, some of whose supporters had joined the
Russian-backed insurgency in Eastern Ukraine. Realizing that we should
not channel our CVE activities in any specific OSCE Mission department,
but that the CVE activities needed to encompass the broad mandate of
the Mission, we positioned the management and execution of the project
in the Office of Head of Mission, which would allow the project manager
to task and work with all departments. This approach allows us to
tackle the problem with a multi-faceted approach, which addresses
primarily youth alienation in all of its manifestations.
The OSCE Mission supports the Follow Us initiative, started by the
Mission to bring together prominent women, particularly women
parliamentarians, from Belgrade and Pristina. In addition to providing
financial support, in cooperation with the OSCE Mission in Kosovo, for
meetings of the two groups, the OSCE Mission commissioned a series of
documentaries of varying lengths to promote the accomplishments of the
group and the benefit of having women from opposite communities speak
to each other. The documentary has been screened for various audiences
in both Serbia and Kosovo. The Follow Us initiative participants have
most recently developed an action plan and an objective that includes
mentoring the next generation of Serbian and Kosovo women leaders. As a
result of their decision, the OSCE Missions to Serbia and in Kosovo
funded a group of young women from Belgrade and Pristina to organize a
caravan, where they, as a group, visited regional cities in Serbia and
Kosovo, to describe the impact of the program bringing them together to
connect simply as people. Using the Follow Us initiative as a template,
the OSCE Mission is organizing a regional conference in Belgrade of
women parliamentarians to allow them to discuss their common issues as
women and as politicians.
During the Serbian chairmanship, Serbia designated a young Serbian
woman as the Chair's representative on youth and security. The young
woman happened to be working as an intern at the OSCE Mission. We
extended her internship, and used her status within the Mission to
support her travel to various events that she was obliged to attend in
her new capacity, saving the Serbian OSCE Chair scarce resources, as
well as furthering the professional development and capacity of an OSCE
Mission intern. We kept her on subsequently on a contracted basis,
which meant that she received a salary. We continue to work in the
youth promotion area, a continuing area of OSCE Mission attention, with
the three pillars on the Serbian side working on youth issues--the
National Council, National Association of Youth Workers and the
Association of Local Youth Offices. We also leveraged a Serbia-Albania
rapprochement resulting from a Memorandum of Understanding signed by
the Serbian and Albanian Governments in 2014 to promote greater
understanding between the youth of the respective countries. We
obtained funding for a Serbian-Albanian youth exchange, bringing
Albanian and Serbian youth together to break down stereotypes that each
has of the other. The OSCE Mission is examining opportunities to
advance the initiative under the auspices of the Regional Youth
Cooperation Office (RYCO), recently opened in Tirana and established by
decision of the Balkans countries participating in the Berlin Process.
During the course of my adult career, I have worked basically for
two organizations. For nearly ten years, I was an enlisted soldier and
officer in the U.S. Army. And then, for slightly more than 30 years, I
have been a Foreign Service Officer in the State Department. My
secondment to the OSCE Mission was a unique foray into another
organizational environment. I had the opportunity to work with talented
and accomplished people of many nationalities, with dedicated and
enthusiastic Serbians, and to gain an appreciation for the value of
multinational diplomacy. I am honored to have the opportunity to speak
to you, but I am also deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to
work at the OSCE Mission to Serbia, one of the real highlights of a
long and rewarding career. Thank you for your attention.
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