In this brief article, it is impossible to make a detailed analysis of all the conflicts in the OSCE area where autonomy has been an issue over the 25 years since the end of the Cold War. However, an effort will be made to paint a more overall picture, updating, in particular, one earlier contribution to this debate.
The former German ambassador to Belgrade and the OSCE, Hans Jörg Eiff, in 1998, described and analysed the various efforts to deal with demands for secession and independence in the OSCE.1 His article is titled âAutonomy as a Method of Conflict Management and Protection of Minorities within the OSCE Frameworkâ. He detailed some of the specific questions involving Croatia and Kosovo, the latter issue still being negotiated. He also expressed hope that the mandate of institutions such as the High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) and the Court of Conciliation and Arbitration would be more extensively used in the future. And he argued:
Further development of the OSCEâs set of norms in the politically binding fashion appropriate to the Organization could prove to be more practical than efforts to bolster the law on minorities with legally binding agreements within the framework of the Council of Europe or of the United Nations.
Eiff sought to portray a gradual, long-term effort to deal with the relics of the Cold War and to resolve the future status of former communist states, that had belonged to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia:
Autonomy arrangements have typically proven to be in demand for certain portions of the territory in the successor states to Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union where national minorities constitute a regional majority â thus in parts of Croatia, Kosovo, Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Nagorno Karabakh, the Crimea, and Chechnya.
As a practical matter, what is usually involved is the attempt to forestall efforts at secession by the granting of extensive rights of self-government. The idea is to satisfy the demands of minorities for self-determination in a way consistent with the territorial integrity of the country in question. In the cases mentioned above it is primarily a question of territorial autonomy, of introducing a special status into a particular area. Thus, the terms âspecial statusâ or âspecial status of autonomyâ or âself-governmentâ are in some cases used in place of âautonomy.â
Now that autonomy has been included in certain OSCE documents on minority matters as a possible form of settlement, it has become more difficult to reject international involvement with reference to the principle of non-intervention (as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is presently trying to do in connection with the Kosovo question), even though these texts cannot be regarded as a basis for autonomy claims under international law.
Eiff published his article the year before the war in Kosovo started, detailing some of the steps the OSCE had decided to prevent a conflict from breaking out. This included the mission to Belgrade by former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, accompanied i.a. by the EU Troika from Vienna.2 In hindsight, what seemed to be an issue relating to the situation in Kosovo was, to a large extent, also associated with the domestic political situation in Belgrade at a time when President MiloÅ¡eviÄ experienced weakness and political conflict with several charismatic political opponents in the country. He then proceeded to seek to form a political unity on the issue of Kosovo, which in turn led to what now is history. This war was later used as a pretext by Russia for its aggression in Georgia and Ukraine.
1 The Current State of Affairs: a Bleak Picture of the Prospects for the OSCE
Looking at the status of minority rights in various regions across the OSCE area in 2023, pessimism now prevails among many, if not most, observers. Full respect for the rights of national minorities is a distant and subordinate objective in the security policy of most European states. In some cases, the existence of national minorities is not recognised, whereas in others only some national minorities and not others are legally established. Even when national minorities are recognised, their rights are sometimes not a priority in internal politics. In addition, in an ever more tense international environment, the competition for political attention to multiple crises often relegates minority issues to a subordinate level of priority. From the perspective of some countries, minority issues even tend to become a political tool in the quest for international influence. In a number of these cases, the issue of autonomy has been an important part of the discourse.
The main argument of this article is that the OSCE, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which in 1994 succeeded the CSCE, (Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe), is a mirror of this situation, or more correctly, perhaps, a mirror of this negative development from the end of the Cold War â from a very promising beginning. The organisation, for reasons that will be briefly outlined below, can be seen as more of an arena than an actor in this context. Hopes for a strong OSCE contribution to security and cooperation were, as noted above, much higher right after the end of the Cold War. But the OSCE was never equipped with the capabilities and the mandates required to make a major and sustained difference. A Russian commentator would most likely argue that this is due to the fact that the OSCE never received the legal status proposed by Russia during the period of Dimitry Medvedev as President of the Russian Federation. OSCE parliamentarians, for their part, have for many years argued that the consensus principle has crippled the capabilities of the organisation to take robust decisions. More specifically, as regards the institutional set up, it was intentionally fragmented, with different institutions in Vienna, Prague, Warsaw, and the Hague kept together by a Secretary General with a lower formal status in terms of protocol than his/her counterparts in the Council of Europe. This was the result of the fact that the political leadership of the organisation was entrusted to a chairpersonship on the level of foreign ministers, effectively subordinating the Secretary-General to a level below that.
To make things even more complicated, the mandate of the HCNM in the Hague was limited to the protection not of national minorities but persons belonging to national minorities. Several participating states, including notably Turkey, insisted on this since they do not recognise certain types of national minorities within their borders, notably in the Turkish case the existence of a Kurdish minority, referring to language in the treaty of Lausanne from 1923, which only recognises non-Muslim minorities. The HCNM mandate was agreed in 1992 after extensive negotiations.3 In the OSCE documents, an early decision was thus taken not to link the issue of autonomy and potential secession to minorities but rather to persons belonging to national minorities. In this way, on the other hand, the mandate remained relevant to include situations inside countries such as Latvia and Estonia, with significant Russian-speaking parts of the population distributed across the entire country.
Over the years, several intervening factors in a deteriorating international climate have tended to reduce the role of the organisation in this domain. Already in 2008, the integrity of Georgia was compromised by an invasion of South Ossetia through the Roki Tunnel, connecting this part of Georgia with Russian parts of North Caucasus. Before that, Abkhazia as a part of Georgia was separated from Georgia through Russian subversive action. And in 2014, Crimea was annexed to the Russian Federation alongside significant parts of eastern Ukraine.
At the time of writing, the very existence of the OSCE is threatened and so is the notion of an all-European security order that includes the Russian Federation. This stands in strong contrast to a strengthened European Union as well as a revitalised and enlarged NATO. In addition, in parallel to the OSCE, a renewed format for informal political cooperation involving almost 50 countries as proposed by France, the European Political Community has already held several summits, excluding Russia and Belarus.4
There is still hope, of course, for a renewed dialogue reminiscent of the dramatic developments in the mid-1980s. At the end of the tunnel some sort of settlement may come about as, after all, happened after the First and Second World Wars. But hope is ever more distant as the popular support for President Putin is maintained on a level difficult to understand, given the impact of the war in Ukraine.
2 The Fundamental Role of the Human Dimension
The limited, positive attention to minority rights issues, however, must not hide the fact that issues relating to democracy, human rights and the rule of law continue to play a fundamental role in international relations and in domestic developments in the OSCE region, and have done since the end of the Cold War. But the role of minorities in this context, as a part of civil society, is often seen either as a vain hope or â by state actors â as an existential threat, depending on the perspective. The notion that the entire human dimension of the OSCE is a factor of promoting peace is problematic in several respects, since the quest for democracy often is perceived as requiring regime change in countries such as Belarus. The legacy of the policies of President George W. Bush is very much alive among many civil society groups.
Developments in Ukraine play a central role in this picture. The Maidan Uprising of February 2014 introduced remarkable changes in the security environment of Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. That Russia in one blow lost political control over a major part of the former Soviet Union without a major military battle, led to violent conflict and war in the eastern part of Ukraine in 2014. From 2022 onwards, Russia invaded the entire Ukraine.
The significance of this development can be seen more clearly from the perspective of a Russian threat, which has been thoroughly analysed in the academic literature in recent years. The notion of Colour revolutions, which has played an important role in several countries inside and outside Europe, including the so-called Arab Spring, has long since emerged as a perceived threat to Russian national security.5 On top of this, an ideology outlining a struggle to return to Tsarist days of greatness has made it possible for the Russian leadership to subject its population to increased suffering over a longer period.
Against this background it is only natural that in a number of these cases the nexus nationalism-autonomy-secession has become a more important part of the discourse concerning international peace and security than the non-violent path towards greater respect for minority rights outlined in early OSCE documents after the Cold War, here represented by an extract from the CSCE Copenhagen document from 1990:
(35) The participating States will respect the right of persons belonging to national minorities to effective participation in public affairs, including participation in the affairs relating to the protection and promotion of the identity of such minorities. The participating States note the efforts undertaken to protect and create conditions for the promotion of the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity of certain national minorities by establishing, as one of the possible means to achieve these aims, appropriate local or autonomous administrations corresponding to the specific historical and territorial circumstances of such minorities and in accordance with the policies of the state concerned.
(36) The participating States recognize the particular importance of increasing constructive co-operation among themselves on questions relating to national minorities. Such co-operation seeks to promote mutual understanding and confidence, friendly and good-neighbourly relations, international peace, security and justice. Every participating State will promote a climate of mutual respect, understanding, co-operation and solidarity among all persons living on its territory, without distinction as to ethnic or national origin or religion, and will encourage the solution of problems through dialogue based on the principles of the rule of law.6
The resolution of the à land question thus remains a shining exception rather than, as sometimes hoped for after the Cold War, a formula for success also in other contexts.
3 The Role of the OSCE in Hindsight
The fact that the à land question forms the exception rather than the rule has not always been the case. It is worth remembering that the then EU, the European Community, through the so-called Carrington Plan in 1991, proposed a solution to the future status of different minorities in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which arguably ârepresents the most ambitious project so far to introduce autonomy as a method of conflict settlement into multinational states that were once communist.â7 As we now know, this approach failed.
Indeed, a number of conflicts led to the establishment of several independent states, partly following historical precedents, rather than simply adapting to the notion of a region divided into territories, each dominated by one ethnic group (for instance the sometimes-discussed division of territory between Serbia-Albania-Croatia). Several serious problems of stability remain to be resolved in this context, both in Bosnia, between its three constituent peoples, Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs, and in Kosovo as regards the Serbian minority and the recognition of Kosovo by all European states. A number of OSCE participating states have not yet recognised Kosovo as an independent state, including not only Russia and Serbia but also notably several members of the European Union, Spain, Greece, Slovakia, Cyprus, and Romania as well as Moldova.8
Hopes were as noted high for peace and development towards democracy, human rights, and the rule of law in the entire OSCE area after the Cold War. The initial wars in the Balkans were widely perceived as an exception to prove the rule. And several countries, not least in Central Asia, were invited into the OSCE with the hope that they would develop in a democratic direction, although they never had experienced such a development before. Historically difficult internal and international conflicts in the region of the former Soviet Union were of course identified, but many thought that there was a way to deal with them, at least to contain them, and if possible, to promote sustainable solutions. The OSCE emerged as a potential organisation with the flexibility required to introduce the possibility of dialogue with non-state entities in such regions.
Several OSCE institutions were set up and assigned to serve that purpose. This included the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in Warsaw with a focus on elections and the promotion of democracy, and the High Commissioner on (notably not of) National Minorities in The Hague, which was set up in a way closely aligning with the vision of its first incumbent, the former foreign minister of the Netherlands, Max van Der Stoel. He promoted a methodology of carefully developing one dossier after the other in which to primarily pursue silent diplomacy, initially notably in the southern part of the Balkans region, such as between Albania-Greece and inside what is now North Macedonia. The High Commissioner, however, was in several countries never mandated to deal with the overall situation. In Turkey the HCNM was not authorised to engage in the protection of national and minority groups, since the OSCE does not address issues of minorities but rather persons belonging to national minorities. And Kurds are not, as previously noted, recognised by the Turkish Constitution as persons belonging to a Kurdish minority. In Ukraine the HCNM was invited by the government from 1994 and in some ways engaged on issues related to the status of Crimean Tatars and on the relationship between the Ukrainian majority and Russian-speaking minority. But there were major difficulties for the HCNM to come up with solutions on overall issues that would be seriously discussed between the parties concerned. In cooperation with the Council of Europe and European Commission, the HCNM, however, played an important role in helping to define solutions as regards Russian-speaking inhabitants in the Baltic countries ahead of their EU membership. The HCNM was also active in several other regions and conflicts.
But there are also other formats in which the OSCE played a visible role. One such specific format that consistently played a role since 1991 has been the Conference on Nagorno Karabakh under the auspices of the OSCE (Minsk Conference) led by a group of countries typically co-chaired by Russia, the United States and France but also in the mid-nineties with a prominent role for Sweden and Finland in succession. This format is interesting not least since it, at the initiative of the Finnish co-chairmanship, tried to inform the parties about the à land solution.9 Even if the then Finnish co-chairmanship of the Minsk Group on Nagorno-Karabakh made a valiant effort to promote reconciliation between Armenia and Azerbaijan using the à land example, what counted in the end was the relative military capabilities of the two countries to gain and regain territory.10 The OSCE Minsk Group is, however, an example of a flexible solution accommodating the possibilities for informal arrangements allowing dialogue with non-state entities and international organisations that might be helpful in financing costs related to a peace settlement, such as the European Commission. It was also an important point of reference during a negotiation of formats for so-called third-party peacekeeping in the former Soviet space, unsuccessfully under negotiation during the OSCE Rome ministerial in 1993.11
One of the most innovative proposals during the Paris summit of 1990 was the Canadian idea to set up a Conflict Prevention Centre (CPC) inside the OSCE. As an example, this part of the Secretariat played a role as a partner to the United Nations and its small observer mission to Abkhazia (UNOMIG), sometimes supported by the OSCE mission to Georgia. CPC also in a more general sense played a role in managing and coordinating a growing number of OSCE field missions led by nationals, often senior diplomats, from participating states. Sometimes these missions were led by senior diplomats from one OSCE participating State in succession, as has been the case in Bosnia and Moldova where consistently the Head of Mission has been a US diplomat, which has tended to increase OSCE leverage in the country concerned. Sometimes the heads of missions have also enjoyed a considerable freedom of action, for instance when introducing cooperation between the mission and NATO and the EU Commission as was the case in Kosovo.
Some of these missions have been large, amounting to 500 people in countries such as Bosnia and in Kosovo. Their role in preparing countries, such as the Baltic states and Croatia, for EU membership was not insignificant. Many mission members, for instance in Croatia, observed judicial proceedings involving settlement of property claims on a scale not possible for the local EU delegation to follow. The long-term mission in Croatia notably had the mandate to:
monitor implementation of Croatian legislation and agreements and commitments entered into by the Croatian government on â the return of all refugees and displaced persons and on protection of their rights, and â the protection of persons belonging to national minorities.12
Also, the mandate of the OSCEâs long-term mission in Moldova expressly makes an agreement on a âspecial statusâ for Transnistria one of its goals. In Georgia, the OSCE mission sought a solution of territorial autonomy within the framework of the federal state.
However, the possibilities for the OSCE and the OSCE missions to play an important role inside the Russian Federation, as was the case when dealing with the Chechnya conflict between 1995 and 1998, were soon dramatically circumscribed. Russia did not hesitate at an early stage to establish parallel diplomatic formats for dealing with the situation in the Caucasus region, notably by appointing plenipotentiary diplomatic envoys and mediating formats â while at the same time forming an alliance with one of the parties to the conflict, Armenia.
Following the International Criminal Court (ICC) indictment of the President of the Russian Federation and the official deemed responsible for forcibly removing children from their homes in parts of Ukraine in order to change the ethnic composition of contested regions now annexed into the Russian Federation, a new dimension of complexity has been introduced into the picture.13
The OSCE has paid very limited attention to autonomy issues inside the European Union despite repeated requests from the Russian Federation for the OSCE to do so. One of the reasons for this has been the existence of a European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia in Vienna.14 There are a couple of exceptions, for instance, when the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) as directed called for increased attention to the right for peaceful assembly after the referendum in Catalonia. The OSCE has also welcomed the Good Friday agreement. Regarding developments of relevance to the rule of law inside the European Union and countries such as Hungary and Poland, the OSCE contribution has been weak compared with that of the Council of Europe, something partly to be explained by the consensus principle of the OSCE.
From the perspective of several OSCE secretary-generals, the competition for a clear mandate and sufficient resources to promote conflict prevention, conflict management and resolution was closely related also to the role of the United Nations and the European Union in the various conflict areas. The division of labour in the beginning of the period after the Cold War between different international organisations was not obvious and led to wide-ranging discussions both on the level of the United Nations (Agenda for Peace), the European Union, the Council of Europe, NATO with its Partnership for Peace, the OSCE, as well as a number of sub-regional formats for cooperation, including the Council of the Baltic Sea States in the Nordic region.
The United Nations after some hesitation took the overall coordinating role through UNMIK in Kosovo, whereas the European Union was a particularly attractive partner to countries seeking membership in the Union. As a result, it was sometimes felt that EU missions, for example in Georgia after the 2008 war, undermined OSCE presence in the area. This example is of interest given the active involvement of the President of France, in the capacity of President of the EU, in the settlement of the war at the same time as Finland, holding the chair of the OSCE with a Finnish ambassador heading up the OSCE mission to Georgia, sought to maintain its earlier OSCE presence in South Ossetia after the war, which did not turn out to be possible.15
At an early stage, competition also arose between the OSCE and the Council of Europe with its legally based foundations and well-established Parliamentary Assembly. From the perspective of the Council of Europe, the new institutions of the OSCE should have been much more closely coordinated with the Council, which was counteracted by the United States. The US, in the person of President George H.W. Bush, took a leading role in configuring the new OSCE at the Paris summit, together with French President Mitterrand, with Russian President Gorbachev taking a more passive part.16
4 What Is a Chairman-in-Office to Do?
The political leadership of the OSCE as an organisation was at the end of the Cold War entrusted to the Chair-in-Office in yearly succession, starting with Hans Dietrich Genscher and followed, after a couple of years, by the Swedish Foreign Minister in 1992, with Sweden returning to the position once more in 2021 on the eve of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Finland took up the position in 2008 before and during the Russian aggression against Georgia, and is again scheduled to be Chair-in-Office during the year of the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki final act in 2025. It goes without saying that this is an ominous challenge, not least for the President of the Republic of Finland after the presidential election in 2024. The possibilities to reaffirm and improve upon the Helsinki final act from 1975 are, of course, minuscule. As regards the Swedish presidency in 2021, it had to scale down expectations for substantial progress and focus on an issue not planned to be of central importance, namely the role of the OSCE on environment and climate change. However, efforts were made, despite remaining difficulties to interact due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and some progress was made on Moldova at the Stockholm ministerial.
Some twenty frozen conflicts in the OSCE region added to the difficulties of keeping the organisation operational, including the decisions enabling the organisation to work with approved budget. When the Polish Chair took over on 1 January 2022, it did not do so as an actor seeking compromises with the Russian Federation but rather as a country effectively aligned with Ukraine, not hesitating to use its position as Chairman-in-office to promote the Ukrainian caseâs visibility.
Eiff, H.J. (no date) Autonomy as a method of conflict management and protection of ⦠Available at: https://ifsh.de/file-CORE/documents/yearbook/english/98/Eiff.pdf (Accessed: 06 June 2023). Eiff was a colleague of the current author during the end of the nineties in Vienna.
Including the current author representing the European Commission.
Mandate OSCE. Available at: https://www.osce.org/hcnm/107878 (Accessed: 6 June 2023).
Meeting of the European political community â consilium. Available at: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/international-summit/2023/06/01/ (Accessed: 6 June 2023).
Jonsson, O. (2019) The Russian understanding of war: Blurring the lines between war and peace, Amazon. Available at: https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Understanding-War-Blurring-between/dp/1626167346 (Accessed: 6 June 2023).
Document of the Copenhagen meeting of the conference on the human dimension of the CSCE (no date) OSCE. Available at: https://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/14304#:~:text=The%201990%20CSCE%2FOSCE%20Copenhagen,the%20rights%20of%20the%20child. (Accessed: 6 June 2023).
See Eiff, supra note 1.
International recognition of Kosovo (2023) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_Kosovo (Accessed: 6 June 2023).
Admin (2018) Aland Islands Model: Pro Et Contra, Caucasus Edition. Available at: https://caucasusedition.net/aland-islands-model-pro-et-contra/ (Accessed: 6 June 2023).
Admin (2018) Aland Islands Model: Pro Et Contra, Caucasus Edition. Available at: https://caucasusedition.net/aland-islands-model-pro-et-contra/ (Accessed: 6 June 2023).
(No date a) A role for OSCE peacekeeping? â IFSH. Available at: https://ifsh.de/file-CORE/documents/Working_Papers/CORE_WP27.pdf (Accessed: 6 June 2023). The current author participated in these negotiations as a Swedish representative.
OSCE Mission to Croatia / OSCE Office in Zagreb (closed) (no date) OSCE. Available at: https://www.osce.org/croatia-closed (Accessed: 6 June 2023).
Situation in Ukraine: ICC judges issue arrest warrants against Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova (no date) International Criminal Court. Available at: https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-issue-arrest-warrants-against-vladimir-vladimirovich-putin-and (Accessed: 6 June 2023).
Fundamental rights agency (2023) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_Rights_Agency (Accessed: 6 June 2023).
Deutsche Welle (2009) EU in Georgia â DW â 08/07/2009, dw.com. Available at: https://www.dw.com/en/praise-for-eu-mission-in-georgia-but-questions-over-us-role-remain/a-4547031 (Accessed: 06 June 2023). The importance of the OSCE presence in South Ossetia before the war was clearly seen during av visit of OSCE ambassadors, including the current author, just a few weeks before the war.
As observed by the current author as a Swedish delegate.