Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe

Baroness Stern Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stern]

My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, in expressing very warm thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, for securing this short debate. His experience of intergovernmental organisations is extensive and it is too rarely that this House has the benefit of hearing and learning from that wide experience.

My knowledge of the OSCE in no ways matches the noble Lord’s but it goes back a long way. I first became involved nearly two decades ago through the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, or ODIHR for short—an acronym I shall continue to use, although it does not sound as enthusiastic as it might. It is the OSCE’s work in relation to democracy, human rights and the rule of law about which I want to make a few remarks this evening.

In the mid-1990s, that office was headed by a very distinguished British public servant, Audrey Glover, who was a former legal adviser to the Foreign Office and a most eminent contributor to human rights and the rule of human law. This was the time when the newly independent countries of the former Soviet Union were beginning to reform their legal systems and prison systems. ODIHR was in the forefront of that work and did a great deal of good.

Over the years, the work of ODIHR has developed in line with the changing times. Now, as the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, pointed out, much of it is concerned with how far elections are free and fair. For example, last Thursday, 12 January, an OSCE report was released on the state Duma elections held in Russia in December. That report noted that although the elections were technically well administered, the election administration was not independent. The count was characterised by frequent procedural violations; there were instances of apparent manipulation, including several serious instances of ballot box-stuffing; and there was undue interference by state authorities at different levels. Therefore, the election was slanted in favour of the ruling party. I am sure the Minister would agree that having an independent report like this in the public domain is invaluable and that probably only the OSCE could produce it.

A fair and impartial legal system is the bedrock of a state run according the rule of law. For some former Soviet countries, it has been a hard struggle, a struggle that is still going on, to achieve that. I am sure the Minister would also agree that a conference held in Ukraine last month about strengthening the independence of Ukraine’s judiciary, where specific and pragmatic suggestions for change were made, was important not just for Ukraine but for the rest of us in Europe.

Next week, ODIHR is organising a visit to Croatia for officials from the Ministry of the Interior and the security services training school in Tajikistan to learn about the methods of teaching on human rights and countering terrorism used by the Police Academy of Croatia. I imagine that we can all see the advantages of such a programme, and once again the OSCE is the organisation best placed to arrange it. However, in case this sounds a little theoretical, I want to bring in a little personal experience.

A year ago, I attended a number of events organised by the OSCE office in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, to coincide with UN Human Rights Day. I much appreciated the efforts of our excellent and hard-working embassy there to arrange my participation and to support the events. One of the events was a very big meeting to consider a report of the ODIHR election observation mission on the 2010 parliamentary elections in Tajikistan. The meeting was well attended by large numbers of what might be called “ordinary people”: that is, not officials or young people with laptops, but elderly women who looked as if they had had to walk a long way to get to wherever they picked up transport eventually to reach the capital and a lot of men who obviously came from a lifetime of agricultural work. A very passionate discussion took place and it was clear how much democracy mattered to these people.

On my second visit, which was this year, the OSCE office allowed me to attend a meeting of the non-governmental organisations they worked with and supported in the law enforcement and justice sector. These organisations tried among other things to provide legal representation to arrested people, to raise concerns about ill-treatment and to visit prisons—not easy or very safe work. The support from the OSCE was enormously important to them and made it possible to do that work, otherwise it would not have been done.

Why is this important and why should the UK support it perhaps a little more energetically than it does at present? The promotion of human rights, democracy and the rule of law is in the interests of all of us, and the work of the intergovernmental organisations that support it has made a huge difference to the shaping of the post-Soviet world. The OSCE brings to that reshaping two important factors: first, it has a broader remit than the Council of Europe; and, secondly, it brings together security and human rights. That conjunction is vital if we really want a more secure world.

The OSCE calls its human rights work the human dimension, and the human dimension is indispensable for real security. Additionally, its work is very important in countries that are not in the Council of Europe: the countries of central Asia, for instance. For them, the OSCE provides a forum where they can interact with European colleagues on an equal footing through regional and international events, allowing them access to expertise and best practices that they would not otherwise encounter.

What is Government’s policy on seconding British expertise to the OSCE and in particular to ODIHR, where people from the United Kingdom made such a contribution in the past? Are we still enthusiastic about seconding people? Do we encourage groups to come here to see good practice: for example, in dealing with violence against women, where we have some of the best services and approaches in the world which those involved would be most willing to share, or in detention monitoring and security sector reform? Does the FCO offer UK expertise to ODIHR when it is looking for help with training, such as in human rights and the rule of law? How far do the Government see the OSCE’s work in human rights, democratisation, the protection of minorities and resolving conflict as a valuable part of the achievement of UK ambitions in these areas? If indeed the Government value that work, could they perhaps develop ways of showing that enthusiasm a little more than they do currently?