Hillary Clinton at the OSCE Ministerial Council First Plenary Session in Dublin
Intervention at the OSCE Ministerial Council First Plenary Session
Remarks
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
Royal Dublin Society
Dublin, Ireland
December 6, 2012
Thank
you very much and thanks to Foreign Minister Gilmore and the Republic
of Ireland for hosting us today. We applaud your work as chair in office
of the OSCE, to reaffirm this organization's core principles and
strengthen its capacities to promote peace and security, champion
democracy, and defend universal human rights and dignity. And we join
with all members in welcoming Mongolia as the newest participating
state.
As we approach the 40th anniversary of the Helsinki Final
Act, it is important to remember that those accords and this
organization that sprang from them affirmed an inextricable link between
the security of states and the security of citizens. They codified
universal rights and freedoms that belong to all citizens, and those
commitments empowered and encouraged dissidents to work for change. In
the years that followed, the shipyard workers of Solidarity, reformers
in Hungary, demonstrators in Prague all seized on the fundamental rights
defined at Helsinki and they held their governments to account for not
living up to the standards to which they had agreed. We are the
inheritors and the guardians of that legacy.
This year alone, the
OSCE sent observer missions to monitor 17 different elections, including
in my own country. In May the OSCE's efforts to help dual national
Kosovo Serbs vote in Serbia's elections helped ensure a largely free,
fair, and peaceful process. When High Representative Ashton and I
visited the Balkans in October, we heard about what a difference that
made. The OSCE also supported a successful election and a peaceful
transfer of power in Georgia. It is, as we have already heard, deeply
engaged on Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, and Georgia. And throughout
the region, the OSCE continues to advance a comprehensive approach to
security that makes a difference in people's lives.
But I see a
growing concern for the future of this organization and the values it
has always championed. More than 20 years after the end of the Cold War,
the work of creating a Europe that is whole, free, and at peace remains
unfinished. I just met with a group of the Civil Society Solidarity
Platform leaders from a number of member states. They talked to me about
the growing challenges and dangers that they are facing, about new
restrictions on human rights from governments, new pressures on
journalists, new assaults on NGOs. And I urge all of us to pay attention
to their concerns.
For example, in Belarus, the Government
continues to systematically repress human rights, detain political
prisoners, and intimidate journalists. In Ukraine, the elections in
October were a step backwards for democracy, and we remain deeply
concerned about the selective prosecution of opposition leaders. In
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, there are examples
of the restrictions of the freedom of expression online and offline as
well as the freedom of religion. In the Caucasus, we see constraints on
judicial independence, attacks on journalists, and elections that are
not always free and fair.
And we have seen in Russia restrictions
on civil society including proposed legislation that would require many
NGOs and journalists to register as foreign agents if they receive
funding from abroad. There are unfortunately signs of democratic
backsliding in Hungary and challenges to constitutional processes in
Romania and the ugly specter of anti-Semitism, xenophobia,
discrimination against immigrants, Roma, LGBT persons, and other
vulnerable populations persists.
So it is worth reminding
ourselves that every participating state, including the United States,
has room for improvement. The work of building a democracy and
protecting human rights is never done, and one of the strengths of the
OSCE has been that it provides a forum for discussing this challenge and
making progress together. But there is even trouble here. This
organization operates by consensus, so it cannot function when even a
single state blocks progress. Forty-seven states have cosponsored the
draft declaration on fundamental freedoms in the digital age, yet its
path forward is blocked. The same goes for measures on media freedom,
freedom of assembly and association, and military transparency.
The
OSCE must avoid institutional changes that would weaken it and
undermine our fundamental commitments limiting the participation of NGOs
in our discussions, offering amendments and vetoing proposals to
respond quickly to conflicts and crises, trying to exert greater central
control over the field offices and field workers to curb their efforts
on human rights, suspending implementation of treaties and agreements so
there is less military transparency in Europe than a decade ago. These
are not the way to progress in the 21st century.
The United States
remains committed to the goal of a Europe that is whole, free, and at
peace and to the OSCE whose principles are sound. We welcome any and all
efforts to strengthen this organization, but that means empowering the
institutions we already have to function free from interference, not
curtailing them. And it means implementing the commitments we have made
to one another and to our citizens, not undermining them. So as we
approach the 40th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act, this is a time
for the OSCE to once again take up the mantle of leadership, to push
forward the frontiers of human rights and dignity, and to reaffirm the
values and principles that have guided this organization ever since its
founding. Thank you.
