Changes in the international community after the end of the Cold War have led international institutions working in the field of peace and security to face new challenges that have highlighted the disadvantage of existing norms, mechanisms and conceptual apparatus for addressing new security threats. International institutions are struggling to deal with modern security threats, including ethnic conflicts, while the process of identifying security threats is complex. The master's thesis examines how the concept of security of international institutions influences the management of (ethnic) conflicts through a study of the functioning of the Security Council and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in the Ukrainian conflict. Thesis demonstrates that modern concept surpasses the perception of the state as the only relevant referent object of security and that security is an intersubjective category that raises the issue of the process of identifying (new) security threats. As a consequence the concept of security affects the discourse and the functioning of the actors. In the case of the Security Council, we can see that Member States are aware of the importance of the established practice, which stems from the concept of security of the institution, and its impact on decision-making in the Security Council. Despite the recognition of violations of certain elements of security in practice, the OSCE has difficulty addressing this violation. The thesis also shows how the specialized knowledge of individual institutions influences the discourse of states in these institutions, and that the concept of security in individual institutions is not static, but the result of continuous (re)interpretations.
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