INTRODUCTION

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is a political organisation. Established by the Helsinki Final Act in 1975,1 during the depths of the Cold War, it sought to bring together the East and the West as a platform for dialogue. It established a new multilateral framework for Europe, the United States and the Soviet Union with the aim of managing conflict. It conceived rules of engagement, ensuring that no country's actions were any longer solely a matter of ‘internal affairs’ and established a peer-to-peer review between states of their performance in adherence to human rights through the prism of security. It introduced structures, institutions and processes to bring to life the political commitments which the participating states undertook in Helsinki and thereafter. Today it has 57 members (all in the Northern Hemisphere), as well as ‘partners for cooperation’ in North Africa and the Middle East. Since 1975, it has taken a number of important decisions and developed new commitments, also in the realm of the rule of law.

Its participating states have undertaken political commitments in three major fields called ‘dimensions’, that is, security, environmental and economic and human rights. They are based on the premise that without the respect for human rights, there can be no security. Without environmental/economic stability, security is also not possible. Indeed, all three dimensions of its work are theoretically interconnected and codependent – while operationally separate.