With 57 participating states from North America, Europe and Asia, the OSCE - the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe - is the world's largest regional security organisation.

The origins of the OSCE date back to the early 1970s, to the Helsinki Final Act (1975) and the creation of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) which, during the Cold War, served as an important multilateral forum for dialogue between East and West. With the end of the Cold War and the adoption of the 1990 Charter of Paris for a New Europe, the CSCE was called upon to play a role in managing the historical change taking place in Europe and to respond to the new challenges of the post-Cold War period. In 1994, the CSCE was renamed the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe to more accurately reflect these changes.

The institutional architecture of the OSCE comprises the Ministerial Council (composed of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of participating States), the Permanent Council (based in Vienna), the Parliamentary Assembly (composed of members from national parliaments, based in Copenhagen) and the General Secretariat (based in Vienna). In addition, the OSCE works closely with other international and regional organisations and cooperates with its Mediterranean and Asian Partner Countries (Partners for Co-operation). It involves civil society in many of its activities and increasingly reaches out to a wide range of other partners, including from the academic, private and development sectors.

The main functions of the organisation are early warning, conflict prevention, crisis management and post-conflict rehabilitation. The OSCE pursues a comprehensive approach to security that encompasses three dimensions: the politico-military dimension, which addresses the military aspects of security; the economic-environmental dimension, which mainly deals with energy, the environment and economic development; and the human dimension, which is devoted to issues relating to the protection of the rule of law and human rights. The OSCE also addresses transnational security challenges, such as violent extremism and radicalisation leading to terrorism, cyber attacks, drug and arms trafficking and human trafficking, migration, and the environmental and human impact of climate change.

Among the specific OSCE mechanisms and bodies engaged in promoting the human dimension, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the High Commissioner on National Minorities, the Representative on Freedom of the Media and the Special Representative and Co-ordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings are of particular relevance.