ODIHR Chief: OSCE Not In Crisis, Despite Persistent Human Rights Challenges

Systematic election fraud, serious restrictions on independent media, continuous limitations on the freedom of assembly and association, increasing threats to human rights defenders, failure to prevent torture and ensure free and accessible justice remain problems in many parts of the geographical area spanned by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Yet, those serious and persistent challenges to the implementation of OSCE human rights commitments do not mean that the organization is in a crisis.

In short, this is what Christian Strohal, the Austrian diplomat in charge of the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), said in his final report to the Permanent Council, the organization's main regular decision-making body that brings together ambassadors of all 56 participating states.

Strohal did not blame any specific country or government in his mid-June address. "We're not in the naming and shaming business," he later said in an interview, adding he was convinced all ambassadors in attendance, especially representatives of nations where basic freedoms remain under threat, knew who he had in mind.

Strohal will leave office at the end of this month, after more than five years spent at the helm of the OSCE's human rights body. He will be succeeded by Janez Lenarcic of Slovenia, who was designated to take the reins of ODIHR for the next three years.

While noting progress made by OSCE participating states toward improving election laws and administrations, the director of ODIHR told the Permanent Council those positive developments were "still too often devalued" by blatant falsification of election results, as well as restrictions imposed on opposition candidates and independent media.

Electoral manipulation before, during and after election day remains so widespread -- particularly in former Soviet republics -- that it sometimes raises questions about the relevance of polls.

Yet, Strohal rejects the idea that ballots, even tightly controlled by authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes, could be foregone conclusions. "If elections were foregone conclusions, no one would go and vote," he told EurasiaNet. "People do go and vote because they want to demonstrate that they believe in democracy and democratic principles. It does not mean that they believe they (those principles) are fully realized, but they want to believe in [them.]"

Yet, indicators suggest much remains to be done in that respect.

Observers dispatched last April by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to assess Georgia's parliamentary election campaign expressed concern at the generally "low level of public trust" in the electoral process. An opinion survey conducted in the wake of the May 21 Georgian legislative elections by the Tbilisi-based International Center on Conflict and Negotiation showed only one-fourth of respondents fully trusted the official tally of the vote. The remaining 75 percent were either skeptical, or mistrustful.

Recent international election observation missions in Georgia and Armenia have sparked widespread controversy, with defeated opposition forces in both countries blaming Western monitors of allegedly overlooking vote manipulation, intimidation of candidates, and government pressure on independent media.

The controversy became particularly vivid after the January 5 Georgian presidential ballot, when U.S. Congressman Alcee Hastings said what he called the "demonstrative competitiveness" of the campaign had allowed democracy to make "a triumphant step" -- a statement that was inconsistent with the first post-election joint statement released by international observers and ODIHR's previous interim reports. A member of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (OSCE PA), Hastings was appointed special coordinator of the short-term international election observation team that monitored the Georgian ballot.

To avoid a repeat of this incident, the OSCE's chairman-in-office dispatched his special envoy, Heikki Talvitie, to Georgia ahead of the May 21 legislative ballot. Talvitie's main task was to ensure that all organizations represented in the international election observation team -- ODIHR, OSCE PA, PACE, European Parliament, and NATO Parliamentary Assembly -- would speak with one voice.

"Talvitie succeeded in hammering out a fairly critical joint statement that, we think, reflected the reality on the ground. But it was not easy, in particular because OSCE parliamentarians were insisting on a more positive assessment of the vote," an OSCE official told EurasiaNet on condition of anonymity.

The official added that a seminar on elections would take place in July in Vienna at the initiative of the OSCE's Finnish chairmanship. The purpose of the meeting is "to reflect on election standards and observation missions," he said.

Election observation missions will also be discussed at the OSCE PA's annual session that will open in Astana on June 29. Yet, Strohal does not believe the OSCE is facing a crisis of election observation. "What we do have is a crisis of compliance with election standards in some countries," he told the Permanent Council.

Citing administrative obstacles established by the Kremlin, ODIHR decided not to monitor recent parliamentary and presidential elections in Russia.

Strohal argues that the decision was not political. It was simply "a response to a Russian decision" to impose impracticable conditions on ODIHR's observation mission, he says. Yet, the move did have a political impact. For one thing, it added fuel to the ongoing dispute among OSCE participating states over ODIHR's mandate.

Calling the OSCE's human rights body an "instrument" in the hands of the West, Russia and another six CIS members states (Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) in 2007 put forward a series of proposals that call for limiting the number of election observers sent to monitor any given ballot and putting ODIHR under the supervision of participating states through the Permanent Council.

The United States and most Western governments oppose the move, which they see as an effort "to deconstruct the current framework for election observation."

Citing the ODIHR dispute and "the re-emergence of a political East and West" epitomized by Russia's decision to suspend its participation to the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, the German-based Center for OSCE Research (CORE) earlier this year cautioned the organization against finding itself marginalized. Among possible ways to avert a crisis, CORE recommended that participating states engage in discussions to find a new consensus on the OSCE's politico-military and human dimension agendas.

But, for Strohal, there is no need for such a debate. "It would take years and you would [end up] with 56 different answers. And in every [participating state] you would find dozens of other answers. So I'm not sure whether this is really the most expedient way of looking at ways to strengthen the joint feeling of responsibility for the common values we have," he says, adding: "You haven't seen any crisis if you really think this is a crisis."

Although many countries have yet to translate all their OSCE human rights commitments into reality, Strohal believes ODIHR has made significant achievements since its creation in the early 1990s. "I would argue that the glass is half-full, rather than half-empty," he says.

In Strohal's opinion, the 35 years that have elapsed since Cold War enemies gathered in Helsinki to open the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe -- the ancestor of today's OSCE -- have proved "a success story."

"It is an uneven success story, a multi-directional success story," he says. "Sometimes this is going backward, but overall I think this is very much moving in the right direction."