Excellent Workshops - Intercultural Conference

4
Tatyana Baeva
about intercultural aspects of security politics
Tatyana Baeva
Press and Public Information Officer, OSCE Secretariat
“Communicating security from Vancouver to
Vladivostok” – Intercultural aspects in the work of the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
(OSCE)
OSCE is the world’s largest regional security organization
bringing together 56 participating states. It is
unique both in its geographic scope and in the nature
of its work as a forum for political dialogue between
the states. Working in the OSCE Secretariat in Vienna
is not only about trying to integrate into the Austrian
culture, but also about communicating with people of
different cultures within the organization – in units,
field missions, and institutions, as well as externally
– with journalists, researchers, and representatives of
OSCE participating states. Communicating to reach a
common ground is essential for the consensus-driven
organization, and the importance of intercultural
component in the process cannot be overestimated.
While reaching full unanimity is unrealistic, the
OSCE seeks to acknowledge the political and cultural
differences and tries to bridge them through building
trust – between people, communities and states.
Tatyana Baeva has served as a Russian-language press
and public information officer at the Vienna-based
Secretariat of the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe since 2009. She was also Press
Officer at the European Commission’s Delegation to
Moscow (2005-2009) and held jobs at private companies
and the Information Office on Russia’s WTO
accession in Moscow. She holds degrees in Public
Relations as well as in International and European
Relations from universities in Saint-Petersburg, Russia,
and Amsterdam, Netherlands.
More than 2,800 employees are working for the
OSCE, mostly in field missions in Eastern Europe,
South-Eastern Europe, Southern Caucasus, and
Central Asia. The Secretariat and the specific scientific
institutions employ 548 people overall and have a
budget of 150.8 million Euro.