OSCE Yearbook 2016

The OSCE Yearbook 2016 documents the “turbulent times” (Frank-Walter Steinmeier) in which Germany assumed the chairmanship of the OSCE in 2016. Leading academics and experienced OSCE practitioners analyse and report on significant events and developments in the OSCE and its 57 participating states over the past twelve months, and comment on the state of European security as a whole. Marcel Peško, the director of the OSCE Conflict Prevention Centre, opens this year’s yearbook by outlining new approaches to resolving the Ukraine crisis, which remains a central concern; he is joined by the project coordinator in Ukraine, who discusses his work. Experts also outline the key features of a future security strategy for the OSCE, comment on the revival of conventional arms control as a priority of the German chairmanship and discuss the organization’s future role in conflict management. The OSCE Yearbook draws lessons for successful conflict resolution from a report on the peace process in Northern Ireland. In this year’s special focus section on “Migration and Refugees in the OSCE Area”, international experts and prominent OSCE representatives consider the crisis of European refugee and migration policy, the OSCE’s potential future contribution to migration management, and the organization and its institutions’ reaction so far to the challenges of the refugee crisis. Other contributions provide an insight into the United Kingdom’s approach to cooperative security in the year of the Brexit vote and some of its domestic consequences, the four-day war in Nagorno-Karabakh, the possibility of OSCE peacekeeping, the history of the OSCE’s economic and environmental dimensions, and China’s relations with the Central Asian states. A heartfelt plea for the OSCE to be granted a long-overdue legal personality completes the yearbook’s broad spectrum of topics. The OSCE Yearbook includes extensive annexes containing facts and figures on its participating states, a list of recent events and a selected current bibliography.