Current OSCE field missions

As the only pan-European security organisation, the OSCE is well placed to play a key role in political efforts to resolve the many conflicts that have broken out in the countries of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. For example, it participates in the 5+2 talks on the Transnistrian settlement process, the Geneva International Discussions on Georgia, the Minsk Group on Nagorno-Karabakh, and the Trilateral Contact Group on Donbas. Following the 1995 Dayton/Paris Peace Accords, the OSCE helped to draw up agreements between Bosnia and Herzegovina and other countries of the former Yugoslavia on arms control and military transparency.
Complementing this political role, at the 1992 Helsinki CSCE summit, participating states agreed on the possibility of sending peacekeepers to conflict zones. Although the OSCE never followed through on this, several of its activities – such as civilian and military monitoring missions – fit the UN definition of peace operations. The most obvious example is the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, an unarmed civilian mission whose main task is to monitor the situation on the ground in the Donbas conflict area, but there are others: the Observer Mission to two border checkpoints, also in Donbas, the Kosovo Verification Mission (1998-1999), which monitored the ceasefire and withdrawal of Serbian forces, and the Border Monitoring Mission (1999-2004) on the Russia-Georgia border.