2019
In 2019, the OSCE Network implemented two projects:
1) “Cross-Regional Corridors of Dialogue: Developing a Complementing Track for Transforming Long-standing Conflicts”
Project leader: Prof. Marko Lehti (TAPRI, Finland)
Over two years, this project provided a platform for dialogue among peacebuilders who live in several disputed territories in the OSCE area. The project enabled these peacebuilders engaged in civil society and research back home to network and discuss common problems. In this way, the project contributed to confidence-building outside the established negotiation and contact formats.
In april 2019, a three-day experimental Cross-Regional Corridors of Dialogue Forum took place in Stuttgart. A follow-up dialogue was conducted in Vienna in October. These two workshops piloted future informal peace-building dialogue formats. The project concluded with a lessons learned report with recommendations for the OSCE and other international organisations.
2) “RISK Study Outreach Project”
Project leader: Wolfgang Zellner (CORE/IFSH, Germany)
As part of the 2018 OSCE Network project on “Reducing the Risk of Conventional Deterrence in Europe: Arms Control in the NATO-Russia Contact Zones”, this outreach activity aimed to promote the findings of a “RISK Study” the OSCE Network issued in 2018. The outreach project was intended to discuss the report with relevant Track I and Track II representatives from across the OSCE region.
The presentations triggered lively and at times heated debates among participants, who included diplomats from various countries, representatives of international organizations, researchers and the media. In order to reach a broader audience in Russia, the report was translated into Russian.
Presentations took place in Vienna, Zurich, Bern, Wasington, D.C., Brussels, Moscow and Tromsø, as well as at the Harvard University.
2018
In 2018, the OSCE Network implemented five projects:
- "Religion and Security Building in the OSCE Context" with Ambassador Philip McDonagh (Edward M. Kennedy Institute, Ireland) as project head
- "Cross-Regional Corridors of Dialogue: Developing a Complementing Track for Transforming Long-standing Conflicts" with Marko Lehti (TAPRI, Finland) as project head. This is a two-year project and thus continues in 2019.
- "A New Concept for Conventional Arms Control" with Wolfgang Zellner (CORE/IFSH, Germany) as project head.
Workingpapers:
- "The OSCE in Central Asia: National Perspectives" with Irina Chernykh (KISI, Kazakhstan) as project head
- "Back to the Roots: The Unfinished Post-Cold War Settlement of 1990 - Historical-Narrative-Workshops in Moscow and St. Petersburg" with Christian Nünlist (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) as project head.
The project aimed at giving recommendations on how to mobilize and include religious leaders, institutions and congregations in new coalitions and frameworks of engagement.
The project was led by Ambassador Philip McDonagh of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute, National University of Ireland, in Maynooth. The first workshop took place in Maynooth on 13 April 2018, organized and financed by the Edward m. Kennedy Institute. The draft report was discussed among representatives of the OSCE Network, representatives of the International Dialogue Centre KAICIID, representatives of the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency and of the OSCE Secretariat and Conflict Prevention Centre on 15-16 October 2018 in Vienna.
The final report ends with a set of recommendations and was presented in Vienna on 8 January 2019. The project was sponsored by the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Ireland, Slovakia and Switzerland.
Joint research and discussions under the project were bundled in two workshops held in Hamburg and Moscow in July and November 2018 with representative of thirteen OSCE Network institutes, other research institutes and government officials.
The outcome of the project was a report written by a group of authors with principal drafter, Wolfgang Zellner. The report forcuses on risk reduction in the NATO-Russia contact zones, in particular the Baltic Sea area. It was presented in February 2019 in Vienna.
The project was jointly sponsored by the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Austria, Germany and Switzerland, and by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Regional Offices in Vienna and Moscow.
In cooperation with the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), a Russian member institute of the OSCE Network of Think Tanks and Academic Institutions, the most important findings of the 2017 Network report "The Road to the Charter of Paris" were presented at a workshop in Moscow on 8 November 2018 by four academics. About 100 hard copies of a Russian translation of the report were disseminated in Russia, and 200 hard copies have been printed to disseminate at future OSCE Network events.
In Moscow, eminent Russian scholars critically reflected on the report and added valuable new insights. In addition, a new Russian partner was found to host a seminar with about 80 Russian international relations students in St. Petersburg on 7 November 2018, where the four academics also presented their views and debated controversial points with them. At both events, the authors not only discussed the findings of their OSCE Network report on 1989-90, but also presented new archival evidence just released by the Bill Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the summer of 2018, which documents the Clinton-Yeltsin discussions about NATO enlargement in the 1990s and allows new insights into a crucial episode on the path from cooperation (1990) to confrontation (2014).
Please read the full project report here.
2017
OSCE Confidence Building in the Economic and Environmental Dimension: Current Opportunities and Constraints
The main context for the discussions under this project was the current state of relations between Russia and the West.
The project was led by Prof. Stefan Wolff of the University of Birmingham with Ambassador Philip Remler of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington D.C., as Principal Drafter. It embraced brainstorming meetings in Birmingham and Vienna, the elaboration of thirteen thematic input papers and the drafting of a final report that was launched at the Economic and Environmental Committee of the Permanent Council on 13 December 2017.
The project was jointly sponsored by the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Austria, Germany, Ireland, Serbia, Slovakia and Switzerland, the University of Birmingham and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Vienna. The 2017 Austrian OSCE Chairmanship and the OSCE Secretariat made valuable contributions.
You can download the report here.
The Road to the Charter of Paris: Divergent Narratives and Lessons for the OSCE Today
The project aimed to contribute to a better mutual understanding of divergent interpretations of the recent past.
The project was led by Dr Christian Nünlist of the Center for Security Studies at the ETH Zurich and Prof. Juhana Aunesluoma of the Network for European Studies at the University of Helsinki. An oral history workshop took place in Paris on 5 September 2017, the organization of which was strongly supported by the Institut français des relations internationales (ifri). Participants were historians and eye-witnesses of the drafting process of the Charter of Paris, including Wilhelm Höynck, Adam Daniel Rotfeld, Anatolii Adamishin, John Maresca, Pierre Morel, Jerzy Nowak, Stefan Lehne, Marianne von Grünigen, Markku Reimaa, William H. Hill, Andrei Zagorski and Barend ter Haar. The draft report was discussed among representatives of the OSCE Network on 6 November 2017 in Vienna. The final report ends with a small set of recommendations and was launched at a side event of the 24th OSCE Ministerial Council Meeting in Vienna on 7 December 2017.
The project was jointly sponsored by the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Austria, Germany, Ireland, Serbia, Slovakia and Switzerland.
You can download the report here.
2016
European Security - Challenges at the Societal Level
Joint research and discussions under the project "European Security – Challenges at the Societal Level" were bundled in two workshops held in Geneva and Moscow in May and October 2016 with representatives of sixteen OSCE Network institutes, other research institutes and government officials.
The outcome of the project was a paper written by a group of authors with key drafter Wolfgang Zellner. The paper builds on sixteen studies on national security policy narratives written by the members of this group. An important finding from these narratives is that they do not exactly match the standard Russian and Western standpoints that are largely mutually exclusive and lay blame for all evil on the other side. The debate over Russia revealed very different approaches. The paper ends with a small set of recommendations and was launched at a side event of the 23rd OSCE Ministerial Council Meeting in Hamburg in December 2016.
The project was jointly sponsored by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs, the Finish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the German Federal Foreign Office, the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.
You can download the paper here.
Protracted Conflicts in the OSCE Region: Innovative Approaches for Co-operation in the Conflict Zones
With Philip Remler as the head of project the objective was to provide a menu of innovative ways in which the
international community can engage with all sides in the four so-called “frozen conflicts” - protracted conflicts on the territory of the former USSR that include the Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transdniestria conflicts . The project was a collective effort of more than a dozen member institutions of the OSCE Network and about forty participants of a workshop conducted in Vienna in July 2016. The project’s final report was elaborated by a group of sixteen experts with Philip Remler of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, D.C. as principal drafter. The paper was launched in Hamburg in parallel with the 23rd OSCE Ministerial Council Meeting in December 2016. The project was sponsored by the German Federal Foreign Office.
You can download the report here.
2015
Reviving Co-operative Security in Europe through the OSCE
In December 2015 the Network published the report "Reviving Co-operative Security in Europe through the OSCE" with recommendations on various OSCE related issues for the Panel of Eminent Persons based on questions initially formulated by the three states of the OSCE 2015 Troika Switzerland, Serbia and Germany.
The report was presented at the Belgrade Security Forum on 1 October 2015 and will be handed over to the Panel of Eminent Persons on the following day.
Project head: Dr Teija Tiilikainen, the Director of the Finnish Institute for International Relations (FIIA)
Please follow the link to download the report.
2014
The Future of OSCE Field Operations (Options)
This report is the joint product of a group of twenty-one members of the OSCE Network of Think Tanks and Academic Institutions. It builds on two workshops arranged at OSCE headquarters in Vienna on 27 June and 4 November 2014 at the invitation of the special co-ordinator under the Helsinki +40 process for reviewing the effectiveness and efficiency of the OSCE, Ambassador Philip McDonagh. This gave us the possibility to talk with many representatives of national delegations to the OSCE, OSCE officials and representatives of field operations. Our discussions have greatly profited from their insight.
This report is not intended to provide a mainstream analysis of OSCE field operations, and put forth recommendations that would have been accepted by everybody anyhow. Rather, its aim is to present proposals that do not (yet) enjoy consensus, in order to inform and stimulate a necessary debate.
You can download the study here.
Threat Perceptions in the OSCE Area
The network’s first project focused on "Threat Perceptions in the OSCE Area". The intention was to analyze the threat perceptions of relevant state actors in the OSCE area in the categories of "military threats", "transnational threats" and "other threats". Experts from 18 network institutions participated in the project. Each drafter contributed a country study on the threat perceptions of the government of his/her country. On the basis of the country studies, an aggregate final study was produced.
For more information, please download the study "Threat Perceptions in the OSCE Area" published in Vienna, 29 April 2014.
