Report by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the OSCE and the Helsinki process. The OSCE is engaged in standard setting in fields including military security, economic and environmental cooperation, and human rights and humanitarian concerns. In addition, it undertakes a variety of preventive diplomacy initiatives designed to prevent, manage and resolve conflict within and among the participating States. In Nov. 1997, the participating States of the OSCE met in Warsaw, Poland for their biennial review of compliance with their human dimension commitments. This report summarizes that meeting.

On November 19, 1990, the participating states of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) gathered in Paris to sign the Charter of Paris and celebrate an end to the Cold War. How did the thirty-five CSCE countries, which included the United States, Canada, and all of Western and Eastern Europe (except Albania), the Soviet Union, and the neutral and nonaligned states, escape the clutches of the Cold 'War without a violent confrontation, a devastating conventional war, or even a nuclear holocaust? Janie Leatherman argues that by forging an understanding of cooperative security and embracing the protection of human rights, the primacy of democratic government, and free market economies, the CSCE led the participating states from Cold War confrontation toward a democratic peace.