Project: Monitoring Serbia’s OSCE Chairmanship15Dec2015
The CENTRE’s researchers' paper published in new Collection of Papers “Forty years since the signing of the Helsinki Final Act”
This year is the 40th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act singing, as well as the year of Serbian OSCE Chairmanship. On this important occasion, the Institute of Comparative Law has launched the Collection of Papers on topics relevant for the OSCE, written by distinguished foreign and domestic experts.
Svetlana Djurdjevic Lukic and Marina Tadic, researchers in the Public Policy Research Centre wrote a paper titled “Civil society role in human dimension of the OSCE”. The Organization for Security and Cooperation is one of the main international security organizations, which is transparent and open for cooperation with civil society. This fact is particularly reflected in activities of Civic Solidarity Platform (the network of independent NGOs from the OSCE region), Parallel Civil Society Conference and the civil society role in monitoring i.e. self-assessment of the human dimension commitments implementation. However, the CENTRE’s researchers have pointed out the concern of civil society organizations related to the implementation of the human dimension commitments as well as shrinking space for civil society in certain participating states of the OSCE. Accordingly, the CENTRE’s researchers underlined that Serbia’s OSCE chairmanship wasn't appropriately utilized for engaging civil society in important dialogue on implementation of the human dimension commitments and for informing of public administration about the relevant issue.
Collection contains papers by eminent foreign professors and experts dealing with issues rečated to the OSCE security agenda, such as Wolfgang Zellner, Alice Ackermann, Kari Mottola, Rosa Pati and Andrei Zagorski. The Collection is divided into five chapters. The first three chapters are structured according to the traditional division into three diplomatic areas. The first chapter analyzes issues falling within politico-military dimension, the second chapter opens up questions concerning the economic and environmental dimension, while the third chapter refers to the issues related to the human dimension. The fourth chapter discusses the multidimensional issues, while the final chapter presents local perspective and relationship between the OSCE and Serbia.