The liberal peacebuilding agenda has come to be associated with the failure of top-down, heavy-handed international interventions in countries as diverse as Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo or even Timor-Leste. International organizations have played a prominent role in these debates, especially the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. This contribution will look at an underanalyzed international organization in the discussion, the OSCE, and its innovative approach to security - which put a strong emphasis on individual and collective human rights before the actual apparition of the concept of human security. Based on fieldwork conducted in Kosovo, Georgia, Vienna and The Hague, this contribution will link the recent work of this organization with the debates on liberal peacebuilding, which in turn enables us to shed a different light on the possibilities and limits of the liberal peacebuilding agenda in the post-interventionist era.
