IRELAND WILL work to ensure the internet remains an “open and public forum” for empowering citizens when it heads the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in 2012.
Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore told a meeting in Vienna yesterday that Ireland would use its year-long chairmanship to redouble efforts to tackle cross-border threats in the 56-country OSCE area.
“Efforts to check emerging transnational threats, such as terrorism, organised crime, illicit trafficking and others, are faltering,” he told the permanent council of the OSCE yesterday in Vienna.
“Unless we redouble our efforts to tackle these problems, the goal of a free, democratic, common and indivisible security community . . . will remain an aspiration, rather than a reality.”
The OSCE is the world’s largest security-oriented intergovernmental organisation with a focus on human rights, press freedom and arms control. For the first time in 2012, Ireland will head its permanent council, the main decision-making body which meets weekly in the Austrian capital.
In a crowded field of international organisations, Mr Gilmore said OSCE members – themselves facing budget constraints – were best served by concentrating on core competencies. He said Ireland was anxious to build on the momentum of the Arab Spring revolutions to guarantee freedom of communication on the internet and through social media.
“Ireland, as chair, will seek to work . . . to ensure that the internet remains an open and public forum,” he said, promising to continue work of the outgoing Lithuanian chair dedicated “to pluralism in the new media and the safety of journalists”.
Mr Gilmore said Ireland would prioritise governance measures to tackle corruption, money-laundering, financing of terrorism,drugs and cyber security.
“In adopting a cross-dimensional approach to tackling all of these issues, Ireland will always be mindful of the complementary role that civil society and the media can play,” said Mr Gilmore.
The OSCE began life as the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in the 1970s during the cold war détente as a multilateral forum for dialogue and negotiation between East and West.
An ad hoc organisation of the UN, it was renamed OSCE in 1994 and now has 56 participating states stretching from Canada to Kazakhstan. Members enjoy equal status and decisions are taken by consensus on a non-binding basis.