OurColony.net

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is now a well-established international organization endowed with a sophisticated institutional web, which should allow it to perform the historical task of stabilizing Europe. As a regional organization under Chapter VIII of the United Nations Charter, the OSCE can avail itself of classical tools of conflict prevention and crisis management, such as dispute settlement and peace-keeping. Lawyers immediately perceive the peculiarity of an organization whose constitutive instrument lies in the province of soft law instead of being based on a formal treaty. The book illustrates the OSCE institutional system and gives a critical evaluation of its ability to cope with an evolving European security order. It covers extensively three main subjects, which form the core of the OSCE: human rights (human dimension), peaceful settlement of disputes, and peace-keeping. Consequently, the volume deals with the human dimension mechanisms, the High Commissioner of National Minorities, long-term missions, peace-keeping instruments and OSCE relations with the United Nations and European security organizations, the Valletta mechanism and the OSCE Court of Conciliation and Arbitration. The OSCE in the Maintenance of Peace and Security is a collective enterprise, involving the efforts of lawyers, career diplomats, international-relations scholars and international officials. The practice of the Organization is thoroughly examined, including case-studies such as Nagorno-Karabakh and the former Yugoslavia, and the theoretical foundation of OSCE instruments and functions is extensively analyzed. A chapter on OSCE's Mediterranean dimension examines the OSCE periphery and the possibility of its geographical expansion. Consultation is facilitated by an ample index. The OSCE in the Maintenance of Peace and Security gives a complete account of the OSCE structure, functions and perspectives, making it useful for lawyers, international relations experts, diplomats and international civil servants.