Helsinki Accords

The Helsinki Accords constitute the final declaration of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (later renamed Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe ), which took place in 1975 in Helsinki . The final declaration was signed by 35 countries from the two former military blocs of the Cold War .

Part of this statement was about human rights, other parts went on cooperation in the fields of economy , science , technology , environment , security issues and humanitarian issues. The section on human rights was a foundation on which many dissidents and human rights organizations in the Eastern bloc appealed. It is striking that after the signing of the agreements went home with the idea to have signed an agreement on security, while the chords decade later saw primarily as an agreement on human rights.

Content

 * 1 Background
 * 2 Human Rights
 * 3 See also
 * 4 External links
 * 5 Literature

Following [ edit ]
The conference in Helsinki was originally intended as a safety conference. Especially the Soviet Union wanted such a conference, which they wanted to legitimize their de facto occupation of Eastern Europe. In addition, the Soviet Union hoped to achieve the necessary economic benefits. The countries of Western Europe also saw merit in this idea, which she especially wanted to improve communication with the east and wanted to reduce travel barriers between East and West. Also, could then be used the opportunity to put human rights on the agenda and to solve the practical issues. This mainly concerned border conflicts (and there were again not recognized the necessary limits) and for West Germany in the context of his Ostpolitik to things like family reunification. The third major party, the United States, not really been waiting for the idea, but eventually did so with me, especially for the detente not to endanger.

[Human edit ]
Nowadays mainly sees the provisions on human rights as the added value of 'Helsinki'. In the 60s and early 70s, however, there was little attention to human rights as part of the international politics . The view was that human rights was a national matter, and according to the principle of non-intervention in internal affairs that was certainly force at that time, was there for human rights on an international platform no place. That began to change when the European Community (EC) in the late 60 human rights as one of its basic values ​​began to show. , The EC put this issue on the agenda of the Conference in Helsinki, resulting in provisions of the Helsinki Accords in which the signatories recognized that citizens had certain civil and human rights. While these passages on human rights initially were seen as unimportant, dissidents in Eastern Europe helped to increase its importance considerably. Namely they acknowledged that their governments, by signing the agreements, recognizing that their citizens some (people) had rights and that they would respect it.In practice, however, this did not happen, so the dissidents used the agreements as a legal basis to criticize their governments. These developments were picked up in the West (especially in the US), so too the value of human passages was recognized in the agreements. This human rights were a major issue in international politics, to the present day.

See also [ edit ]

 * Charter 77, Human Rights organization in Czechoslovakia
 * Human Rights Watch, an international human rights organization founded under the name Helsinki Watch.