Confidence building in the OSCE
Confidence building lies at the heart of what the OSCE does. The term was first used during the Cold War to denote measures taken to reduce the fear of attack between East and West. Some of the first confidence-building measures are contained in the Helsinki Final Act, agreed in 1975 by the 35 countries participating in the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE, predecessor of the OSCE). They still form the basis of current arrangements to ensure transparency and build trust between participating States. In addition, since the early 1990s, the OSCE has developed measures to build confidence between communities within participating States. In the early years of the CSCE, confidence building focused primarily on hard security.
The confidence- and security-building measures (CSBMs) agreed in the Helsinki Final Actand at subsequent meetings in Stockholm and Vienna dealt with military matters such as data exchanges, pre-notification of military movements or exercises and limitations on the deployment of troops and armaments in a particular area. But non-military measures for building confidence have also been a part of the OSCE since the beginning. Often called confidence-building measures (CBMs) in contrast to the classical CSBMs, these focus on changing perceptions and (re)building relations between adversaries.
The Helsinki Final Act contains provisions on co-operation in the fields of economics, science, technology and the environment “as a means to contribute to the reinforcement of peace and security in Europe and the world as a whole.” As a matter of fact, the entire process of talks leading to the Helsinki Final Act was an unprecedented exercise of building confidence between the two Cold War camps. Over the years, CBMs have been used more, although not exclusively, in the context of intra-state conflicts, for instance in South-Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, Moldova and Kyrgyzstan.
What makes a good CBM?
CBMs can take many different forms, depending on at which stage of the conflict cycle they are used, how deep the conflict between the two sides is a whether they are used in intra-State or inter-State conflicts. They can be initiated top-down by elites, like the current CBM process in Moldova, or bottom-up by affected communities, as in the multi-ethnic mediation networks or cross-border water management projects supported by the OSCE in Kyrgyzstan. They can start up as unilateral measures of good will, like German Chancellor Willy Brandt's spontaneous genuflection in Warsaw in 1970 before a monument to the victims of the Nazi-era Warsaw Ghetto uprising, or take the form of an international agreement, like the Open Skies Treaty.
What matters is that they take root at all levels of both affected communities. The Northern Ireland peace process, where peace movements from within the affected societies were complemented by strong leadership by the political elite, is a case in point. CBMs, by their very nature, are incremental. In order to make a difference, they need to be long-term. Once feelings of fear or hatred between conflicting parties have taken root, one-time measures or projects of short duration will have little effect. Confidence is best built by combining several CBMs reaching out to different layers of society in a cumulative process. Reciprocity and local ownership are essential elements. They also need to be consistent: contradictory actions and signals could destroy rather than build confidence. In Moldova, an initiative by then-President Voronin to create working groups on CBMs in 2007 was shortly afterwards neutralized by a government official’s announcement that the Moldovan authorities would crack down on drivers using Transdniestrian license plates on Chisinau-controlled territory. Following this bumpy start, policies on both sides gradually became more consistent, and five years later the CBM process in Moldova is well on track.
What CBMs cannot achieve?
CBMs, taken by themselves, cannot solve a conflict. They cannot eliminate the social and economic root causes of a conflict. They will not change existing balances or imbalances of power and are unlikely to affect the core interests of the conflict actors.
Whether or not they can get off the ground at all depends on political will, financial and human resources and the prevailing mindsets of the sides.
And even once they do, the potential obstacles are many. Spoilers may aim to derail a process they dislike or consider a threat to their vested interests. Legal requirements or changes to them might hamper creative solutions. Policy changes, perhaps triggered by issues not directly related to the conflict, might likewise create obstacles.
CBMs are difficult to embed in environments where the rule of law and the administration of justice are weak, where there are pervasive human rights violations, particularly if they are perceived to target primarily one group, and where there is a court system in which segments of the population feel they cannot seek justice. Individuals are unlikely to participate in CBMs if they perceive that they may risk arrest or imprisonment.
OSCE success stories
Despite these pitfalls, the OSCE, through its various field operations and institutions, has managed to implement quite a number of CBMs, across the OSCE area and in all three security dimensions. Here are some examples: In Kyrgyzstan the Community Security Initiative has facilitated police-public partnership initiatives to re-establish a dialogue between the police and local communities as well as between ethnic Kyrgyz and ethnic Uzbek communities. In a separate project, the Osh Field Office of the OSCE Centre in Bishkek launched a pilot project of multi-ethnic mediator teams providing early warning and conflict prevention through mediation in cases of latent and acute conflict involving ethnic Kyrgyz and ethnic Uzbek communities.
In the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the work of the confidence-building monitors of the OSCE field mission there and the Mission’s police reform programme were instrumental in creating the mutual trust needed for the re-deployment of police forces in Albanian neighbourhoods following the violent conflict between ethnic Albanian fighters and state security forces in 2001.
In southern Serbia and in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the High Commissioner on National Minorities, together with the OSCE field operations in both countries, has contributed to confidence building between majority and minority representatives by fostering several multi-ethnic education programmes over the past decade.
Following consensus within the framework of the Geneva International Discussions in 2010, the OSCE started to implement EU-funded water projects in areas affected by the August 2008 conflict in Georgia. The projects aim at facilitating access to water for people living on both sides. They also help to promote dialogue and co-operation on practical issues for the mutual benefit of people living on both sides, which is essential for long-term stability in the area.
In Moldova, the OSCE Mission has been instrumental in promoting and assisting the work of joint CBM groups bringing together Moldovan officials and their Transdniestrian counterparts. At the same time the Mission has been reaching out to journalists, civil society and local inhabitants from both sides by supporting joint concerts, summer schools, sport events and projects bringing together journalists from both banks of the Dniestr/Nistru River.
In Central Asia, the field operations and the Office of the OSCE Co-ordinator for Economic and Environmental Activities (OCEEA) have promoted local and regional confidence building through cross-border water management initiatives, such as the Chui-Talas water commission between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
In the South Caucasus, the OCEEA has promoted confidence building in the framework of joint projects on fighting wildfires, bringing together among others fire fighters from Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Some of these CMBs have been more successful than others. But each of them is has helped to overcome divisions, open communication channels and increase trust between the sides – all of which are needed to build lasting peace.