Speeches and Interviews of the Permanent Representative

STATEMENT BY MR. ALEXANDER LUKASHEVICH,

PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION,

AT THE 1309th MEETING OF THE OSCE PERMANENT COUNCIL

VIA VIDEO TELECONFERENCE

15 April 2021

In response to the report by the Director

of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, Matteo Mecacci

Madam Chairperson,

We welcome Mr. Matteo Mecacci to the Permanent Council. In the spirit of the Swedish Chairmanship’s call to go back to basics, we should like to begin with the origins of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) – its election activities. It was established as an election observation office.

We note that, despite the coronavirus pandemic, the Office has succeeded in continuing its election observation activities in the OSCE area. Nevertheless, we are once again compelled to note that there are still serious imbalances in the geographical deployment and size of missions in this field. We shall cite only a few figures.

By our count, from 2018 until the pandemic began in 2020, all 17 full-scale observation missions were sent either to States of the former Soviet Union or to the Balkans and Turkey. What is more, at no time during the same period did the Office send a large-scale mission to a Western country. Even the United  States of America and Poland, for which ODIHR experts had chosen the format of limited observation missions, were no exception. In addition, among the Western States, the Office decided that monitoring should not take place at all in 11 countries during the period in question. A total of 4 countries received only scaled-down expert teams, while limited election assessment missions were sent to another 13 countries. The same trend was also observed during the pandemic in 2020, when almost all full-scale observation missions were replaced by limited observation missions and by a new “coronavirus” format – special assessment missions. Again, it was in the States “to the east” – eight of them. Only to the United States and Poland was  a limited observation mission and a special assessment mission deployed, respectively. In the remainder of the Western countries, there were expert teams (Lithuania), or no observers deployed at all (Iceland). At the same time, there is a persistent feeling that, against the backdrop of serious problems in the electoral sphere in the West – and 2020 highlighted this especially in a number of countries – the Office’s experts seem to prefer not to notice these very shortcomings in order to artificially underestimate the format of the missions sent there. Although in the States “to the east”, similar or even lesser problems are emphasized far more acutely.

The most telling example is perhaps the inept observation by the ODIHR mission of the general elections in the United States last November. Let me remind you that the Office’s observers, with considerable reservations, recognized the elections to be in accordance with democratic norms, competitive and well organized. And this despite the fact that around 72 per cent of Republican Party supporters doubt the integrity of the election. Furthermore, how can this expression of the people’s will be recognized as conforming to democratic norms when observers are not allowed in 18 states in violation of paragraph 8 of the 1990 CSCE Copenhagen Document? The assertion that it is the prerogative of the state authorities to address this issue is no more than an excuse – it is the US Federal Government, not the states, that has adopted the OSCE commitments and assumed responsibility for their implementation without any exceptions.

In our opinion, the emerging picture is largely due to imperfections in the Office’s existing electoral methodology, not to mention arbitrary approaches to following even this internal “methodology”. As before, we call for work to begin on the development of consensus-based principles for election observation.

We are well aware, Mr. Mecacci, that the difficult situation that you have inherited cannot be changed quickly. Nevertheless, we suggest that you take a fresh look at the “electoral stereotypes” that have developed in the executive structure headed by you and try to proceed with reform in this area. I recall that, back in 2007, a joint draft ministerial decision on “Basic principles for the organization of OSCE/ODIHR observation of national elections” (on behalf of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) was put forward to the OSCE Ministerial Council meeting in Madrid. It would make sense to revisit this proposal. Make the office for democratic institutions truly democratic!

We are confident that it would also help optimize the Office’s spending on its election activities, much of which is hard to rationalize. We therefore consider the ODIHR’s request for an increase in the funding allocated to the Elections Programme within the framework of the OSCE Unified Budget Proposal for 2021 to be unjustified. When calculating the level of funding for election monitoring, the average expenditures over the previous five years are used. In other words, all the calculations are focused on the past and do not reflect the real need for resources for the future. The Office itself does not reliably know how much money it really needs for each subsequent year, which makes it fundamentally impossible to justify any increase in costs. In terms of budgetary discipline, this is a very weak methodology that does not comply with international best practices, including the budgeting norms of the organizations of the United Nations system.

The financial methodology used by the ODIHR provides no incentive to seek savings because it is based on the following principle: The more money you have spent in the past, the more money you will receive in the future. This is the approach we regularly encounter in the context of budget discussions. Moreover, the Office is unable to demonstrate any measures to increase cost-effectiveness. For example, in the 2021 Unified Budget Proposal, the Secretariat reported on savings across a number of expenditure items, while the Office limited itself to general information, without giving any insight into what it had achieved. And where are the exact figures confirming that the ODIHR is doing at least something in this area?

We should like to recall that, in accordance with OSCE Financial Regulation 6.02, all the Organization’s executive structures are obliged to ensure that maximum economy is exercised in using budgetary resources. This task is especially urgent given the economic difficulties many participating States are currently experiencing in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. However, the ODIHR’s requests to increase funding, as well as the lack of information on the savings it has actually achieved, raise questions: Does the ODIHR follow through on this mandate? Or does it feel that it does not have to comply with requirements shared by the entire Organization?

Mr. Director,

The pandemic has undoubtedly been an unprecedented challenge, the consequences of which we have yet to assess. It has affected all participating States and has exacerbated existing “chronic diseases”. At the same time, social and economic rights have come to the fore, and the need for their protection has increased manifold. We urge you to include these rights among the priorities for the Office’s work.

We share your view that there are no “perfect democracies”. This means that no OSCE participating State can claim to be superior when it comes to human rights – everywhere has its faults. In spite of this, the geographical imbalance in the Office’s activities persists. The situation in some countries is literally monitored with a magnifying glass, while in other countries massive human rights violations are often  simply ignored or do not receive sufficient attention from the Office. One must conclude that this executive structure is being used by a particular group of countries as a tool to secure their own narrow interests. It would be interesting to hear the methodology by which the ODIHR selects countries for its critical comments. In addition, we should like to call on those very countries that are so concerned about “human rights problems” outside their territories to soberly assess the situation at home – against the background of racism, suppression of freedom of speech and assembly, persecution of dissidents, and so on. Set an example by inviting ODIHR experts to help you solve these problems. If not, then refrain from imposing such recommendations on others.

As early as 2006, at the OSCE Ministerial Council meeting in Brussels, participating States expressed concern “at violent manifestations of extremism associated with racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, aggressive nationalism and neo-Nazism”. Since then, the situation has continued to deteriorate, especially against the backdrop of the pandemic. This once again emphasizes the inadequacy of considering the threat of neo-Nazism only in the context of hate crimes. We expect the new leadership of the Office to take practical steps to include this topic as a standing item on the agenda.

In the context of the ODIHR’s annual reviews on hate crimes, we emphasize the need to be strictly guided by consensus-based definitions and themes. Constructive co-operation with the Office is in no way facilitated by broad interpretations of its commitments or by value judgements about the “reliability” of the information provided by participating States.

We note the Office’s traditional focus on anti-Semitism and on Holocaust remembrance. We expect that similar attention will also be paid to combating intolerance against Christians and Muslims. The instructions of the 2014 OSCE Ministerial Council meeting in Basel to elaborate declarations on combating discrimination against Christians, Muslims and members of other religions have yet to be carried out. Furthermore, we call on the ODIHR to finally begin drafting a comprehensive document on Christianophobia – similar to the corresponding manuals on anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim crimes.

We regret to note that the Office continues to engage in questionable extrabudgetary projects and to get carried away with contradictory concepts as well as non-consensus and highly confrontational topics. Meanwhile, important issues such as the elimination of statelessness, the preservation of historical and cultural heritage, the rights of the child, the development of human contacts, and many other things fall by the wayside. The Office and the High Commissioner on National Minorities need to respond promptly to violations of linguistic and educational rights.

The Chairmanship and the participating States, with the expert assistance of the ODIHR, need to continue their work to agree on a complete “package” of human dimension events for the year. This should be carried out in strict conformity with the Organization’s Rules of Procedure and the relevant decisions of the Ministerial Council and the Permanent Council.

In general, as we have repeatedly stressed, the task of optimizing the whole human dimension of the OSCE is long overdue. Together with other like-minded countries, Russia has submitted relevant proposals on a number of occasions.

In conclusion, we wish you, Mr. Mecacci, and the staff of the Office success in your work in accordance with your mandate. We look forward to your visit to Moscow in May.

Thank you for your attention. I request that this statement be attached to the journal of today’s Permanent Council meeting.