OSCE Yearbook 2003

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) plays an indispensable role in creating and maintaining peace, security and stability in Europe. With the ongoing enlargement of NATO and the EU, however, what sort of future will the OSCE have? This is the central question considered in the OSCE Yearbook 2003.
As well as the OSCE’s classical tasks of conflict prevention, democratization and the promotion of human rights, the latest volume in the series also turns its attention to the Organization’s role in combating terrorism (e.g. its assumption of border-monitoring duties), its contribution to security-sector reform, its growing involvement in environmental issues (and hence the prevention of environmental conflicts), and its commitment to freedom of the media. Further contributions take as their topics "political Islam”, and organized crime, including the disastrous consequences of the latter’s implication in active and frozen conflicts.
The OSCE Yearbook 2003 contains contributions by more than 30 authors. They have brought an enormous breadth of knowledge and great skill to bear on the question of the OSCE’s new role and the best way it can be fulfilled.
The Yearbook also includes extensive annexes with documents on the OSCE and data and on the Organization’s 55 participating States, and a selected current bibliography.