Minority rights as preventive diplomacy: OSCE-sponsored legal reform and the prevention of ethnic conflict in post-Communist countries

In the post-Cold war era, regional organizations have become important tools of ethnic conflict mediation. Seeking to avoid the financial and political problems of managing conflict once it has started, preventive diplomacy and conflict prevention have become the new international catchwords. Many efforts of preventive diplomacy have involved the implementation of international human rights norms. The OSCE HCNM has operated according to this idea and, since 1993, has sought to prevent inter and intra-State ethnic conflict by implementing international minority rights norms within the national legislation of host-States. The author studies Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia and Romania, and argues that after five years of involvement therein, the HCNM has not succeeded in building long term ethnic harmony. This may be explained by the nature of the disputes in those cases, of the denial of minority rights, and by the HCNM's characteristics as a "process-oriented" mediator.