OSCE sends Needs Assessment Mission (NAM) to Armenia – With More Questions than Answers

Following the European Union’s announcement that it would send a 40-person civilian monitoring mission to the Armenian border with Azerbaijan for a maximum of two months, Armenia’s Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan later surprised many by announcing that Yerevan was also discussing the deployment of observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation and Europe (OSCE). The declaration was made on 18 October during a press conference held in Yerevan alongside his Norwegian counterpart, Anniken Huitfeldt.

From the outset, this sounded highly unlikely.

Complicating matters, however, is the fact that the OSCE relies on consensus among all 57 participating states in its decision making process. This is both its strength and its weakness, though the latter seems to be the reality as relations between the West and Russia continue to sour. Moreover, other participating countries have also managed to derail its smooth functioning  by watering down decisions or documents in order to reach that consensus. In some cases, this has also led to the collapse of entire projects and activities.

As examples, Russia was responsible for the closure of the OSCE Mission in Georgia in late 2008, while Azerbaijan was responsible not only for the closure of the OSCE Mission in Baku in 2015, but also in Yerevan in 2017. But perhaps most demonstrative of this has been the termination of the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine by Russia in March 2022 just one month after its invasion. Ironically, just four months earlier, the OSCE had actually presented the Ukrainian monitoring mission as an example of how consensus can work.

Regardless, when the official OSCE statement materialised on Armenia, it turned out that it was sending a Needs Assessment Mission (NAM) and not a monitoring one. Moreover, its duration would be for six days only from 21-27 October 2022. NAMs, incidentally, are quite regularly dispatched by the OSCE to individual member states, the most well known example being OSCE/ODIHR ahead of monitoring elections, and the NAM sent to Armenia would be from the OSCE Secretariat, perhaps negating the need for full organisational consensus.

“The technical team comprised of international experts and representatives of the OSCE Secretariat will visit areas along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and hold consultations with the relevant national and local stakeholders as well as international partners on the ground.

Even so, Baku reacted strongly to the news, calling it “a private visit by a group of several participating states” while also decrying the lack of consensus in the decision making process. To be fair, it is quite possible that NAMs do not require this, so what could be Azerbaijan’s problem with sending a six-day NAM to Armenia? For one, perhaps, it could be concern that any report might be critical of Baku. Certainly, given how the OSCE works, it is highly unlikely that any recommendation calling for a monitoring mission to be deployed would be adopted.

To reiterate my earlier point, consensus is both the strength and weakness of the OSCE, but it’s that weakness that is increasingly causing major problems for the organisation, with Azerbaijan already refusing to consider the organisation’s draft budget for next year at a time when it least needs further internal dissent and when its future is already on shaky ground.  On 20th October, for example, the US Mission to the OSCE said that the organisation faced “existential challenges and [was] in dire need of an approved budget.”

In conclusion, at least for now, there are more questions than answers about the OSCE Needs Assessment Mission (NAM) being sent to Armenia. Time, of course, will tell.