OSZE-Jahrbuch 2015

In an eventful year, the 2015 OSZE Yearbook (OSCE in English) presents a wealth of informative and revealing analyses and reports, written by practitioners and experts, on important events and developments in the Organisation for Security and Cooperation and its 57 member states as well as on all the dimensions of security in Europe.
This edition of the yearbook focuses on the OSCE and European security 40 years after the signing of the Helsinki Accords. It contains a contribution from the German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, which is followed by a critical review of the early years of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) plus detailed analyses of the current security situation in Europe and relations between Russia and the West.
The yearbook also focuses on the crisis in Ukraine. Two experienced OSCE members, Heidi Tagliavani and Claus Neukirch, provide first-hand insight into the intensive measures being implemented by their organisation to try to de-escalate the conflict. Further contributions examine the role of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) in tackling the crisis, describe the OSCE’s crisis management in general and analyse the relationship between conventional arms control and crisis management in particular.
The book also deals with topics such as the situation of non-citizens in the Baltic States, domestic political developments in Georgia and the Western Balkans, the attempts by Islamist organisations to gain a foothold in Central Asia, the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, the question of religious tolerance and to what extent satire is acceptable, the relationship between state security and human safety in the context of the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean, the treaty on arms trafficking, the lessons learned from the OSCE’s deployment of border surveillance in Georgia and the integration of civil society into the OSCE.
Finally, this yearbook contains a comprehensive appendix with information on the OSCE’s 57 member states, an overview of important events and an up-to-date selection of literature about this organisation.