OSCE Security Days

Heather Conley, Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, speaking at the OSCE Security Days confernce, Vienna, Ausitra, June 25, 2012. (USOSCE/Colin Peters)

On June 25, the OSCE invited eminent speakers from academia and other areas of civil society to take part in the “OSCE Security Days” conference at Vienna’s Hofburg Congress Center.

Timed to precede and inform the OSCE’s Annual Security Review Conference, “Security Days’’ provided a forum for the open-minded discussion of fresh ideas and new approaches for the OSCE’s work in maintaining regional security.

The USOSCE supported the participation of three U.S. speakers at the conference:

Heather Conley, Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was a panelist at the event’s first session, “Shaping a Security Community: thematic and geographic issues within a comprehensive security agenda,” where she presented an analysis of the OSCE’s strengths and limitations as an actor in regional security.

Steven Pifer, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, discussed new approaches to confidence and security building measures and conventional arms control at the conference’s session, “Shaping a Security Community: addressing emerging global challenges. Developing a new approach to conventional arms control?”

and;

Daniel Serwer, scholar at the Middle East Institute and Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies, presented his ideas on how the OSCE could do more to promote reconciliation at the day’s final session, “Towards Reconciliation: a new vision for the OSCE”