CHAPTER 11 Urban Gibson and Karen Lord, Advancements in Standard Setting: Religious Liberty and OSCE commitments
This chapter considers the work of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (“OSCE”). Originally known as the Conference for Security and Cooperation, or the “Helsinki Process” because of its establishment pursuant to the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, the OSCE is currently the largest regional security and human rights organization in the world, with fifty-five member states in North America, Europe, and Central Asia. With respect to the OSCE, Urban Gibson and Karen Lord look at Advancements in Standard Setting: Religious Liberty and OSCE Commitments, While the next chapter by Janne Haaland Matlary focuses more specifically on Implementing Freedom of Religion in the OSCE: Experiences from the Norwegian Chairmanship. Both chapters discuss the history, emergence, institutional structure, norms, and influence of the OSCE. OSCE standards in the field of freedom of religion or belief are particularly advanced, detailed, instructive, and precise. Gibson and Lord describe these commitments to be “by far the clearest delineation of religious liberty commitments in the international arena” 52 and argue that they serve as a universal example as they “represent the aspirations of millions who seek to worship and live freely as their conscience dictates.” 53 They pay particular attention to the 1989 Vienna Concluding Document 54 and note a series of OSCE seminars and the creation of the Advisory Panel on Freedom of Religion or Belief, on which both authors have served.55
52 Gibson and Lord, chapter 11, 254.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid., 248–51.
55 Ibid., 252–54.
56 Matlary, chapter
