Where does Kazakhstan lead the OSCE?

I had my doubts over the Kazakh OSCE presidency, but I actually didn't think that they would go as far as quasi-censoring the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.

That is a huge fail, and the European Union member states in the OSCE should clearly address this!

OSCE: Kazakhstan's focus on Afghanistan is just distraction

The 2010 Kazakh OSCE presidency just has applauded the organisation's focus on Afghanistan.

And although the OSCE engagement with Afghanistan is not new, this press release is part of an obvious strategy:

By refocussing the attention and resources of the pan-European organisation to the political and military problems outside its actual scope - Afghanistan is not a member of the OSCE - countries like Kazakhstan with obvious human rights problems can distract from these issues.

Countries like Russia, that is trying for years to re-organise the OSCE to get rid of the disturbing issues like free elections or human right, Belarus or the Central Asian countries surely also agree with everything that makes the work of ODIHR less important.

But even outside these rights-oriented questions, there are still many security and co-operation problems within the Eurasian region, and the OSCE should focus its resources to these issues before thinking about something that is far beyond its competence and problem-solving ability.

In short: It is wrong that the OSCE looks outside its borders as long as there are so many problems within its member countries, and I can see nothing but distraction in the strategy of the Kazakh presidency that hasn't shown any particular interest in human and civil rights topics over the last two months.

Kazakhstan leading the OSCE in 2010 (updated)

In 2010, Kazakhstan under President Nazarbayev will chair the OSCE, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe including 56 European, Central Asian and some other countries, taking over the presidency from Greece.

And this is what Human Rights Watch told about freedom of expressions in its December 2008 report titled "An Atmosphere of Quiet Repression:

In Kazakhstan, journalists operate in an environment of anxiety, faced with constant intimidating lawsuits and, not infrequently, direct threats to their person. Libel continues to be a criminal, rather than a civil, offense and carries stiff penalties. Even when journalists do not admit to outright self-censorship, they speak privately of the tightly regulated environment and topics they do not dare to cover. Threatening phone calls, visits by the police, and successive lawsuits are common. There are no independent television stations, and websites critical of the government are often blocked by the authorities.

Yet let's not just focus on one single dimension. But since I am no expert on Kazakhstan, I should point to last year's special issue of the academic journal Security and Human Rights on the upcoming Kazakh OSCE chairmanchip that is worth reading for anyone interested.

In one of the articles of this issue, Freedom House programme manager Jeff Goldstein asks a question that I find quite relevant:

"The importance of who holds the Chairmanship was brought home during the August 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia, when the Chairman-in-Office, Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb, travelled to Georgia, met with the parties and strongly criticized Russia’s recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Would a Kazakhstani Chairman-in-Office have done the same?"

This is just one of the possible questions to be asked, and I suppose that the next year will be a very interesting year for the OSCE.

It is good that for the first time a former Soviet Union country takes over the presidency, but Kazakhstan will have to prove that they can serve all dimensions of the OSCE, including peace in Europe and the protection of human rights and civil freedoms.

In any case, the Kazakh chairmanship shows that organising human security in Europe is not limited to EU countries, and that joining forces in pan-European organisations has to be possible under the leadership of Western as well as under Eastern European countries (and beyond), a fact many in the EU tend to forget.

Update (01/01/2010): There is now the press release for the start of the Kazakh presidency, and the Chairman-in-office website has also been updated.