Helsinki +50, draft 2 28. Feb 2025
by Tord Björk
Encyclopedia Britanica summarizes the Helsinki accords: ”The agreement recognized the inviolability of the post-World War II frontiers in Europe and pledged the 35 signatory nations to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms and to cooperate in economic, scientific, humanitarian, and other areas. The Helsinki Accords are nonbinding and do not have treaty status.”i
Gunnar M. Ekeløve-Slydal, Deputy Secretary General, The Norwegian Helsinki Committe give his view (2010): ”It is especially two features of the Helsinki Final Act that remain important. Firstly, that it was intended to establish a comprehensive framework for peace and stability in Europe. And secondly, that it included human rights and fundamental freedoms in that framework.”ii
It is now 50 years after the Helsinki Accords were signed by 35 heads of states on August 1 1975 after several Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) meeting. The geopolitical, social and ecological situation has drastically changed since then. Yet the main aim of the Helsinki process that contributed to détente is still important. Including its follow up by the CSCE meeting in Belgrade 1977-78 when minority rights was introduced as important by Yugoslaviaiii and the CSCE Summit in Paris 1990 which included common security and environmental protectioniv as well as Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe established as a follow up of CSCE in 1995.v
It can be argued maybe more important than ever. This in a time of what can be described as a new cold war while the largest war on the European continent since 1945 is on-going. A time including the double risk of the extinction of humanity due to global warming or other forms of ecological collapse or an atomic war at the end of ever escalating conflicts in several parts of the world.
The geopolitically changing situation
The positioning of Finland as a country not integrated in the Western military alliance NATO was a necessary condition for the success of the Helsinki process. The follow-up conference in Paris 1990 after the fall of the Berlin wall can be seen as a general acceptance in all of Europe behind the accords made in 1975 in a time when the conflict between East and West seemed to have ended.
Today the situation is drastically different. Finland cannot be a bridge between the West and the East anymore. This started to became evident when Finland refused entry visa for several Russian parliamentarians on a EU ban list to the OSCE conference in Helsinki 2015. Official proceedings for a follow up Helsinki+50 conference continued anyway until February 2022 when the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine ended intentions to have any OSCE state level event.
How the anniversary will be payed attention to is not yet clear although some low-key official activity is planned and support has been given to organisations as Historians without borders to channel opinions from the civil society on the OSCE during the Finnish chairmanship and the Helsinki +50 anniversary. The general mood in Finland is not any longer to be proud of the achievements the country made in he 1970s contributing to détente. Rather the opposite. Politicians recently declared that asylum rights embedded in international conventions which Finland has assigned was of no concern when deciding that migrants coming from far away to the border with Russia can be hindered to enter with the use of force.
Finland has signed on to a EU:s neocolonial era of trade agreements and military EU and NATO arrangements that sees the flow of resources to rich Western countries as a right to be violently enforced. A continuation of colonialism where Finlnd only took a small part during the interwar years in Petsamo. A colonialisation which some politicians dreamed of should be extended all over Northern European Russia enabled by German occupation of the rest. It is more and more firmly acknowledging a role of the victorius white side against the reds and the Soviets/Russians. It’s members of the EU parliament honours every rewriting of thistory in the EU parliament claiming that Soviet was as genocidal as Nazi Germany. The legacy of the at the start socially emancipating Ruissian revolution in which peasants and workers in Finland took part is demonized. It’s necessary peace and anticolonial role in world historye erased at the same time as the European modernity embodied by the neoliberal and neocolonial EU is whitewashed. A country that as late as in the early 2000s tried to start a new Helsinki process built on North-South dialogue, sees itself as never having any colonies overseas and played a central role in supporting the liberation movement in Namibia has switched sides and is now joining a more united Western front against migrants and liberation from oppression in the Global South. The role as promoter of North-South as well as West-East dialogue has with changing policies become a past history.
With the membership in NATO and the establishment of 15 US bases in the country and openly dismissing international asylum rights conventions the door to make any important governmental historic achievement is closed. Contributions to peace and stability in Europe and beyond and defending fundamental human rights has to find other ways to address the necessity to follow up on the Helsinki legacy. The need is stronger than ever to address the concerns included in the Helsinki Accords.
Similar developments takes place in the neighbouring Sweden. When it was a neutral country Sweden initiated the first UN Conference on Environment in Stockholm 1972. Today is the present government dismantling some of the successful environment policies and downgraded its support for UN environmental, anti-racist and peace efforts including ending all support for UNRWA in Palestine and the Middle East. Before Sweden contributed a lot to UN peace keeping foprces while today the country is participating in wars of aggression under NATO leadership against Libya violating the limited fly zone mandate while not sending any blue helmets anymore to help solving conflicts. As Finland Sweden has also recently joined NATO and agreed to the estblishment of 17 US bases on its territory. The historic environmental and peace achievements made by the two nations as neutral countries is still in living memory of the populaltion and appreciated in many parts of the world in spite of that the politicians seems willing to make such efforts again.
Nations are not only their governments but at the core their people. When official processes no longer can address the concerns of importance for the survival of mankind civil society can act. Popular movements and faith communities can cooperate across all borders. Strength can be accumulated from earlier achievements by trenewed common efforts of people and governments or other forms of social order. Organizing a peoples Helsinki+50 process and event thus becomes not only a possibility but a necessity for everyone seeing the importance of the achievements made in a neutral country in 1975 supported by its civil society. An event that can address itself to neutral and non-aligned states of today who can be seen as having equally important roles in a world of growing polarizations as Finland had once.
Structural changes in human rights
The UN human rights includes on equal terms both social and democratic rigths. The Keynesian welfare state and its mass production model promoted social inclusion while being repressive against diverse modes of living.vi It also built upon increasing pressure on the biosphere.
The combination of technological advancement of a large scale production model with a socially inclusive democracy in core states of the interstate system entered problems when real income levels of wage earners became higher than productivity levels.
The dual strategies emerging from 1917 and onwards to integrate all countries in this interstate system by promising national development through wilsonian decolonialisation or leninist planned economy paths to prosperity had also started to face problems.vii Stateled developmentalism in the core countries of the West, communist countries in the East and national liberation countries in the Third world was questioned for not achieving what originally was promised. The legitimacy of the old movements that had made the promises to be fulfilled through state power waned but no alternative coherent political program did materialize.
Instead neoliberalism emerged as the dominant mode of production and way to organize a global division of labor. With new information technology the organization of global supply chains and deregulation of financial transactions emerged as a new model of accumulation of wealth. The result was a neoliberal state simultanously less repressive towards individual choices of living while socially excluding broad segments of the population. A state embedded in a transational neoliberal model called globalization upheld by the intrastate system.
The social welfare state built on a social compromise between labor and capital is reduced and replaced with deregulation and privatization. Thus the right to collectively organize protection of the interest of wage earners at the workplace and job market has been diminished. Family farmers are faced with similar problems as food production is deregulated. The state becomes reduced by market imperatives at the national or supra national level through institutions as EU, WTO, IMF or by bilateral agreements.
By raising interest on debt, keeping a monopoly on high technology enabling monopoly prices and patent rights a constant flow of financial resources was extracted from the rest of the world to the West. The dominant narrative claimed the opposite, that development aid did flow from the West to the developing world when actually what happened was the opposite.viii The right to development was replaced by the right to debt.
In 1989 this process reached its peak when the promise of national development from 1917 was dismantled. The competition between capitalist and planned economy versions ended with victory for capitalism. Now transforming itself into a global order based on free trade and neoliberal financial institutions under unilateral Western leadership. The peace movement had contributed to pave the way for arms control agreements and lessening of political tensions.
Thus it could be claimed that the Helsinki Accords had reached its goal in Europe. Peace and stability in Europe was seemingly achieved under the same capitalist development model together with acknowledging human rights and fundamental freedoms. The Helsinki Accords follow up meeting did not have to take place in a neutral country anymore to build a bridge between two opposing camps and took instead place in Paris.
In Europe and globally environment could be addressed at both the meeting in Paris 1990 and at the UN conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro1992. A new era under the concept of sustainable development was ushered in. In Rio the promise was made by Agenda 21 to solve both the environmental crisis and erasing poverty and thus promising social rights to all on Earth. One essential financial mechanism to achieve this was by raising development aid to 0,7 percent of GNP in developed nations. Conventions on climate and biological diversity was supposed to be tools to address main environmental concerns and the Oslo Accords in 1993 to pave the way for the Wilsonian promise of national sovereignty to the Palestinian people.
What followed was the opposite. Development aid was reduced drastically.ix The amount of carbon dioxide emissions released into the athmosphere since 1992 is higher than the total amount emitted in the whole history of mankind before that. The whiping out of biological diversity is equally disastrous and the last COP19 in Colombia ended without any result. The two state solution envisioned for Palestine is more brutally than ever walled in on the West Bank and Gaza and bombed to pieces with its inhabitants.
In a world were the US an the West seemingly unilaterally could dictate their neoliberal model unto the rest of the world with sustainable development as a fig leaf there was less chance for opposition at the interstate level. The room for economic, natural resource, military and other forms of sovereignty diminished for those not belonging to the core countries. Systemic opposition thus evolved more in civil society.
Finland once more had a brief central role. The concept of sustainable development was confronted by Finnish activists influenced by Gandhian thoughts and a general strong relationship to India. Thomas Wallgren, a Finnish anti nuclear and solidarity activist deconstructed the sustainable development concept and showed that it was intellectually inconsistent.x The central core of sustainable development was sustainable growth. But the Brundtland report could not show theoretically how such a growth model would be able to change the whole technosphere in such a way that future generations could live well on earth. This delegitimized the sustainable development model that by avoiding conflict in practice accepted the neoliberal world order. Instead Finnish activists together with like minded movements initiated international climate action days stating the need to win local conflicts and stopping both emissions and stopping deforestation in a global justice context.
But anti-systemic movements had problems in building broader alliances. In the Global South structural adjustment programs imposed by the West caused rebellions which were violently surpressed. Wage-labour force in the Global North was segmented in salaried professionals becoming the social base for peace/ecology/alternative lifestyle movements; “feminized” servicesector employees for the women’s movements; and the “ethnicized” unskilled or semiskilled labor force for the “minority” rights movements.xi Professionalization of these movements further contributed to depolitization of broad layers of society when specific policies for each movement became more important than common demands benefitting the urban and rural majority.
With this professionalization followed also a loss of the social base or it was hard to get one as for NGOs in the former Soviet bloc. Here the formal freedom reached with the help of the Helsinki Accords but not social rights was combined with modeling a civil society according to Western theories. Together with severe austerity politics this gave space to nationalistic populism. Also in the Global South similar changes took place in the civil society when development NGOs took over privatized public sectors and coopted activists from mass popular movements. Processes that also takes place in Western countries when movements becomes more professionalized and lose their social base.
The role of the trade unions was pushed back by the neoliberal policies by dismantling of many larger workplaces or moving them to emerging countries in the global South. The small farmers and women’s movements were more successful in building alliances between movements world wide. Via Campesina became central in initiating an international movement against neoliberalism, also called the anti-globalization or global justice movement.
This movement was repressed violently and its opposition to wars failed. Out-sourcing manufacturing to regions outside the West while maintaining financial control was successul in China and a few other countries. This caused a very large middle class and a disciplined industrial workforce to emerge in parts of what was once the Third World and a gradual decline in Western share of production of wealth.
At the same time other countries became more poor and deindustrialized while inequality was increasing everywhere. Growth was lower in the Global North and South compared to the postwar Keynesian and stateled development postwar era except for the emerging industrial countries who had high levels of increasing GNP. A growth in total enough to raise the standard of living in many countries at the cost of accelerating burden on the global environment. The model was kept together with increasing levels of debt for those who had not enough income in the Global North and to countries in the Global South pushing more and more of them into austerity and autocracy. Both social and democratic rights became more marginalized when the market increased its role in the world.
Finally the brutality with which the system was maintained boomeranged back to the core from where much of it originated. Sanctions after the first Iraq war caused more than a million deaths in the country followed by as many again due to the next war in 2003. When the West did not impose austerity with the help of IMF it started wars violating country after country in its war on terror and countries opposing its neoliberal model. With the war against Yugoslavia in 1999 NATO also changed borders in Europe in violence against the UN charter. In 2022 Russia started a war of aggression against Ukraine also violating the UN Charter that involves hundreds of thousands soldiers leaving many to die. This was dolloed by Finland and Sweden joining NATO.
Approaching Helsinki+50.
The original reasons for the Helsinki process is more dire than ever. The interstate system is more locked into conflicting blocks although some countries still want to maintain their neutrality and a multi-vector economy. The risk for atomic war is even worse than in 1975 and the threat of ecological collapse and irreversible global warming as well. The trend to end colonialism is put on reverse as more and more countries as the US, France, Ukraine and Israel recognise Maroccan occupation of Western Sahara while the UN decision to establish Israel on Palestinian soil in 1948 is becoming more and more violent and volatile with the continued diplomatic support of the West. A conclict including ethnic cleansing and acts by Israel investigated as genocidal by ICC.
On all levels addressed in the CSCE process in Helsinki and Paris as well as OSCE the situation has drastically changed to the worse after a period of détente helped by the achievemens made in 1975.
There is a growing disrespect and violation of international law. The concerns for the need of détente, common security and respect og human rights and each others sovereignty is at least in Europe lower then ever. The territorial integrity of state is violated by the signatory states of the Helsinki Accords in places inside and outside Europe.
Peaceful settlement of disputes is replaced by joining a NATO with a leadership claiming that weapons is the way to peace.
Economic cooperation is replaced by sanctions and trade wars. Globalization is replaced by selective protectionism in the midst of growing geopolitical tensions including wars.
Scientific cooperation is forbidden by the West making research about climate change studies in the Arctic region impossible as well as knowledge of what happens inside Russia based on sociological research. Scientific research is replaced by guess work. The situation is far more worse than during the Soviet era in the 1970s and 80s.
Improvement of human contacts, family reunions, marriages and travel is replaced by closing all border crossings between Finland and Russia.
Facilitating business contacts, technological, and industrial cooperation is replaced by sanctions.
Increasing the flow of information and improvement of the conditions of journalists and expanding cultural exchanges is replaced by forbidding of Russian media and and making it harder for them to work while Western journalists often are expelled from Russia. Cultural exchange is closed down. Artists are cancelled if they have opinions outside the scene which are seen as unacceptable in the current polarizing athmosphere.
Non-intervention in internal affairs has become a problem as opposition against what is considered to be stability of the state is to a growing degree seen as foreign interference to be labeled as agents or carriers of disinformation.
Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief is also under threat on both sides of the polarization between the West and the East, the North and the South.
The new US government dismantling climate diplomacy while replacing multilateral platforms prefering bilateral talks or unilateral decisions makes the situation volatile. But it can also be helpful in braking down barriers etablished by mutual creation of enemy images. OSCE as one of very few platforms were all the main actors are members is at risk but might also be able to live up to the challenge, especially if plural civil society actors will make their voice heard and peaceful coexistence becomes something to wish for.
The Helsinki legacy
The Helsinki Accords had an important role in promoting freedom in Europe. At first many were critical as they legitimized the borders established by World War II and was from the beginning av Soviet initiative. Especially among those strongly opposing the Soviet union the Helsinki Accords was seen as appeasement policy.
It became the opposite when Ludmilla Alexayeva in early 1976 meet Yuri Orlov in front of the Bolshoi Theater. ‘Lyuda, have you read the Helsinki Agreement?’, he asks her. When she says ‘that didn’t impress me’, he says: ‘Don’t you see that this is the first international document in which the issue of human rights is discussed as a component of international peace?’xii This became the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group, the first of very many.xiii A transnational network that could provide support and backing for the efforts of the group in Moscow and similar groups elsewhere soon emerged. The success was not at all given. The US saw a problem in the promotion of human rights as its main focus was intrastate détente. But the two objectives was possible to combine with some balancing manouvers.
What was a historically important movement of lay persons taking risks to support fundamental freedoms merged with strong currents in the peace movement combining demands for stopping placement of cruise missiles on both sides of the divide between NATO and the Warsaw Pact with demands for freedom in Europe. Thus the material conditions for the ability to speek more freely in Western Europe than in Eastern Europe was erased out of the picture. Europe was seen as isolated from the rest of the world. Relations within the existing intrastate system and in many regards racist world order were made invisible.
The focus on fundamental freedoms combined with peace was at the beginning the reason for the success. When it became linked to a strand in the Western European peace movement built on decoupling the peace issue from social and global solidarity concerns it gradually changed character. There was also the women’s peace movement who focuses on the need for taking money from the military to the needs of children everywhere thus focusing on social concerns also outside Europe. But they were sidelined by the more main stream Western peace movements making it important for the Helsinki Commmitees in the East to align with them. Once professionalized Helsinki Committees in the West also separated themselves from social concerns and countries outside Europe the movement became less emancipatory but of course was important in the transition of Europe towards more formal democracy. But this direction was also compatible with neoliberalism and an international economic order both in Eastern Europe and the Global South dictated by the West at high social costs.
Maybe this was necessary under the circumstances at the time. But this ment that social rights were split from democratic rights against the definition made in the UN charter where they are indivisible. The problem became more accentuated with the time. The Helsinki committees developed differently. Some continued as before primarily oriented to focus on violations against fundamental rights in Estern Europe. Others like Human Rights Watchxiv and Civil Rights Defenders developed into globally active organizations becoming central in the growth of an international human rights movement. A movement when its is funded by Western states is strangely different from human rights movements when carried by mass movements in the Global South paying equal attention to social and democratic right as stated as important by the UN charter.
Today this becomes a hindrance at times due to double standards. Several Helsinki Committees have always avoided social rights but now also made their struggle for fundamental rights selective. In accordance with the interests of the states they are funding them they mainly or only address threats against democratic rights in countries which are seen as in opposition to the West. Thus violations against human rights are only reported in countries as Russia, China and Belarus. When secret prisons, a massacre of civilians in Odessa by a governmental friendly mob, journalists were murded, politicians violated on the streets and parties prohibited, Roma camps were demolished and people killed several well funded human rights organizatons did not make any reports about these violations of fundamental rights while reporting only on similar atrocities in the by Russia annexed Crimea and the self proclaimed republics in Eastern Ukraine.
Such double standards is not only showing lack of commitment against stopping violations against human beings if they live in a place considered to not be opportunistic to help. It also effects the credibility when opposing such atrocities in Russia and other places. At their best moments the human rights organizations that emerged out of he Helsinki process is able to use the same standards addressing human rights violations anywhere also outside Europe and when Western interests are backing the actor behind the violations.
The legacy of the Helsinki process is thus full of interesting contradictions. Its strength came from a very limited part of its agenda, fundamental freedoms coupled with a very wide concern for peace and paving the way for such intiative as the Palme Commion for Common Security 1982 and arms control and disarmaments agreemnts. A concern for bridging a gap between West and East that Finland today is ashamed of and thus incapable of repeating officially. Having a historic role as supporting détente and peaceful coexistence seems not to be what the Finnish state wants today. Nor bridging the gap between North and South. One can say that the last time Finland carried the spirit from Helsinki Accords on to the international scene was the Helsinki Process on Globalisation and Democracy started in 2002 and revived in 2012.xv This was an ambitious attempt to address the future of global governance in partnership with Tanzania.xvi
This makes a process and event potentially fruitful. When states both in the West and East do not want to take responsibility and the Global South is treated as spectators other actors have to take a step forward promoting the cooperation needed for a just transiton of our societies avoiding nuclear and ecological collapse. Civil society is such an actor that can commit itself to live as it preaches while also being embedded in society bringing about participation in a democratic change.
We see some tendencies in this direction. A working group in the Global Campaign for Demanding Climate Justice have reached out to the peace movement for common action world-wide for peace and climate justice.xvii The civil rights movements is rejuvenated by lay activists addressing the issue of repression against climate and pro-Palestinian activists. In South Africa Imraan Buccus asked a critical question: ”Should our civil society remain genuinely non-aligned, or will we allow ourselves to be drawn into escalating global tensions?” The reason for this question is that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) hold a conference in Johannesburg under the banner of “democracy” which was strongly rejected by often opposing camps, some mainly rejecting US hegemony, others equally opposing Russia and China but both seeing the US organization NED with its long history of supporting the overthrow of non-neoliberal governments as a threat to South Africa civil society. ”A truly non-aligned foreign policy means refusing to be co-opted into the agendas of all the global superpowers, whether the US, China, or Russia and civil society should also remain independent.”xviii Archbishop Desmond Tutu Intellectual Property (IP) Trust used stronger words against the involvement in the Global Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy (WMD) finance by NED. Participating in a US government-funded event advocating for democracy “at a time when the US is supplying arms in support of the genocide in Palestine”, does not align with Tutu’s values.xix
Meanwhile is the anti democratic tendencies that civil rights organisations has criticized in far away countries as moves towards autocratication on their way to be visible also in the West. In the report “As a whole, it is worrying – One year with the Tidö Agreement” Civil Right Defenders find numerous proposals put forward by the government in Sweden that conflict with fundamental freedoms and rights, especially in regard to criminal and migration policies.xx Other proposals and decisions have been made that considered together and over time, risk weakening democracy including increased restrictions on freedom of association, and freedom of speech.
The current US president promotes much of the autocratic policies criticized in the report on Sweden. His values are often described in social conservative terms similar to those among right wing populists in many countries as well as in main stream Russia. Thus it is harder to contrapose ”Western” values as opposed to ”Eastern” more conservative as decisive for defending human rights. It may be more important to look at what interest different states has including if their track record in supporting human rights in other countries is not built on double standards. Avoiding double standards becomes crucial to maintain a trustworthy struggle for indivisible human rights.
Equally important is the need to address the wars and conflicts both in Europe and the rest of the world with European states often involved contributing to atrocietes with weapon delivieries or diplomatic support as in Gaza and the West Bank. Here the renewal of the common security concept with The Olof Palme Center, International Peace Bureau and the International Trade Union Confederation is a process of importance initiated by civil society in the same spirit as the Helsinki follow up with the Charter of Paris 1990.
A successful follow up on the Helsinki Accords is built on the dynamic between civil society and states. A civil society process and gathering cannot have a dynamic result as a Helsinki+50 event without having a clear mind when it comes to its relationship with states. Here Buccus can help us again. ”South Africa must and should engage with the international community. No country exists in a vacuum, and our economy and people require robust international relationships. But there is a critical difference between building civil society partnerships that respect our autonomy and falling under the sway of foreign agendas that undermine it.” Civil society should engage with states but preferably with non-aligned states and under all circumstances maintain its independence as non-aligned to any superpower.
The structural limitations in Finland and several other countries as neighbouring Sweden has drastically made it hard for popular movements and civil society to organize independent activities. In both countries all funding for peace movements have been erased this year. Only more expert type och organizations as Historian without borders and its international partners have so far received funding for projects related to the Finnish OSCE chairmanship during which the 50 years anniversary takes place.
Peace movements in the Nordic countries cooperating in the Nordic Peace Alliance made Helsinki+50 a main subject at its yearly Conference in Åland in August 2024. A working group was establish to take contact with other organizations and this conceptual note drafted including a proposal for a Helsinki Civil Accords. The network Peace and Climate Justce in Sweden with the members organizations Women for Peace and Artists for Peac ealso represented in the NPA coordination group have together with the Belarusian organization Our House based in Vilnius initiated a conference in Lithuania on peace, human rights and environmental issues also addressing Helsinki+50.
A specialized organisation is The Civic Solidarity Platform (CSP), presenting itself as ”a coalition of civic organizations and groups from the countries of the region of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), as well as international NGOs, interested in joint action to promote and defend democracy, the rule of law and human rights in the OSCE region.” it has a Helsinki+50 Reflection Process in which several meetings have been organized.xxi
At the first addressing civil society’s role in the implementation of the Helsinki principles it was noted that “Do we want a human rights movement that is limited to expert discussions, production of recommendations to international bodies, and strategic litigation at some international courts?”, Dmitry asked, “or do we want a human rights movement which is truly a movement, which reinvigorates new participants, which drives civic engagement and civic participation, that is ambitious in spreading out its ideas beyond the closed discussions in expert circles like ours?”xxii
At another one focused on environmental issues it was noted that ”the OSCE is one of the rare intergovernmental organisations in which civil society engages in active interaction with states and the bodies and institutions of the organisation, and the Helsinki process was built on the idea that we could all work together. However, now this idea has all but vanished. The problem of blocking consensus by Russia, who objects to everything today, creates terrible obstacles to developing anything new in the OSCE or even preserving good things that exist there”xxiii
In the same report it was stated: ”On a positive note, the opinion was voiced that it is the very first time in history that the Helsinki process goes through such a transformation with the possibility of civil society organisations to influence it. Back in 1975, all the arrangements were fixed by big politics, through negotiations of representatives of states. Now, we in civil society can influence it. Therefore, it is important to seize the momentum and make our contribution to the rebuilding of the security architecture of Europe.”
The report includes several useful observations showing how cooperation on environmental issues can help building bridges between states and the usefulness of implementaion of the Helsinki principles for environmental concerns. But both reports lacks structural ways to address the dilemma of follwing up on the Helsinki Accords and the role of OSCE in the future. The lack of peace movements in this process is not helpful while the perspectives og the environmnetal movement is better represented. The outcome of the process will be will be presented at the OSCE Chairpersonship conference in the end of July 2025 in Helsinki and discussed in meetings with stakeholders.
Today as in 1975 when tensions are accelerating between blocks neutral and non-aligned states are needed more than ever. When Finland not anymore is such a state ambassadors from such nations can be invited as special guests. In Europe Ireland, Switzerland and Austria are neutral. All of Africa are members of the Non-Aligned Movement and so are many countries in the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia as well the Andean region. Other nations can be invited to dialogues on especially on specific points of the agenda.
There is a need to acknowledge the full range of problems facing humanity. Helsinki+50 gives a unique opportunity as a comprehensive range of issues was included in the CSCE meetings in Helsinki 1975, Belgrade 1977 and Paris 1990.
Elements that can be included in Helsinki Civil Accords
We call for people in all nations to support peaceful and environmnetally friendly coexistence and the Helsinki Civil Accords as a platform for uniting us across borders, faiths and social groups.
We call for respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief whereever or whenever it is needed.
We call for respect for our common biosphere on which all life on Earth depends.
We support improvement of human contacts, family reunions, marriages and travel.
We build scientific and cultural exchange by people to people contacts
We support scientific cooperation making research about climate change studies in the Arctic region possible again as well as knowledge of what happens inside other countries based on sociological research to enable better understanding between nations and solutions to the problems facing humanity.
We oppose the making of enemy images and support the exchange of views respecting the voice of the people and different local and national experiences on global history and survival of mankind on a planet Earth were future generations can live a rich life.
We support increasing the flow of information and improvement of the conditions of journalists and expanding cultural exchanges. Closing cultural exchange as well as cancelling artists if they have opinions outside the scene which are seen as controversial in the current polarizing athmosphere should be avoided.
We see the need for state non-intervention in internal affairs while at the same time supporting people to people contacts. We oppose participants in such contacts or independent domestic voices being labelled foreign agents or carriers of disinformation.
We support all rights necessary for Sovereign equality between nations. This including the right to natural resources, food, industrial, technological, financial, economic including multi-vector trade, media, cultural and security sovereignty.
We defend the territorial integrity of state whenever it is violated by the signatory states of the Helsinki Accords in places inside and outside Europe or by any other country.
We support the minority rights included in the CSCE statement at the meeting in Yugoslavia 1977 and later OSCE statements.
We oppose a growing disrespect and violation of international law. The support the need for détente and respect of human rights and each others sovereignty.
We especially supports neutrality and non-alignment or any other security agreements built on common security.
We see the principle of equality between participating States and the determination of consensus through multilateral channels of communication as a unique legacy that forms a fundamental part of the CSCE process continued by OSCE of importance also in other international cooperation.xxiv
We support peaceful settlement of disputes.
We see a need in cooperation between both people and states to solve the problems facing mankind lessening tensions enabling disarmament for welfare and environment
Links
Helsinki Accords
https://www.britannica.com/event/Helsinki-Accords
An Almost Forgotten Legacy: Non-Aligned Yugoslavia in the United Nations and in the Making of Contemporary International Law, Arno Trültzsch
Charter of Paris for a New Europe
Second CSCE Summit of Heads of State or Government, Paris, 19 – 21 November 1990. Supplementary document to give effect to certain provisions contained in the Charter of Paris for a New Europe.
Present Heads of State still alive; Franz Vranitzky, Austria, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norway, Ingvar Carlsson, Sweden, maybe more
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe established as a follow up of CSCE in 1995:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_for_Security_and_Co-operation_in_Europe
Conference marks 30th anniversary of CSCE Follow-up Meeting in Belgrade
https://www.osce.org/serbia/57659
Helsinki Committees, OSCE Magazine 3/2010
How so Helsinki? About the evolution of the Netherlands Helsinki Committee, Piet de Klerk
https://www.nhc.nl/how-so-helsinki-about-the-evolution-of-the-netherlands-helsinki-committee/
Our History – Human Rights Watch
https://web.archive.org/web/20140206203626/http://www.hrw.org/node/75134
Andreas Fisahn, Krise der Demokratie, p 101-116, Das Chaos verstehen, Zeidiagnosen aus dem Wissensshaftlichen Beirat von Attac, VSA, 2021
Upcoming political conference divides SA civil society, Imraan Buccus
ENDNOTES
i Helsinki Accords
https://www.britannica.com/event/Helsinki-Accords
ii OSCE Magazine,3/2010 https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/6/4/73223.pdf
iii An Almost Forgotten Legacy: Non-Aligned Yugoslavia in the United Nations and in the Making of Contemporary International Law, Arno Trültzsch, 2017
iv Charter of Paris for a New Europe, Second CSCE Summit of Heads of State or Government, Paris, 19 – 21 November 1990. Supplementary document to give effect to certain provisions contained in the Charter of Paris for a New Europe.
Present Heads of State still alive; Franz Vranitzky, Austria, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norway, Ingvar Carlsson, Sweden, maybe more
v Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe established as a follow up of CSCE in 1995:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_for_Security_and_Co-operation_in_Europe
vi Andreas Fisahn, Krise der Demokratie, p 101-116, Das Chaos verstehen, Zeidiagnosen aus dem Wissensshaftlichen Beirat von Attac, VSA, 2021
vii The concept of national development, 1917 – 1989, Elegy and Requiem Immanuel Wallerstein 1992
viii Economist Joseph Stiglitz, Chief Economist of the World Bank from 1997 to 2000: “What a peculiar world in which poor countries are in effect subsidizing the richest” quoted by Harvey, David, A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press. 2007
ix In fact, Official Development Aid (ODA) fell from $62.4 billion in 1992 to $48.7 billion in 1997.” Review of implementation of Agenda 21 and the Rio Principles Study prepared by the Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future January, Synthesis. 2012
x Thomas Wallgren, Ohållbart om hållbarhet, Sjutton anmärkningar till Brundtlandrapporten, presentation at meetings in Esboo, Finland and Stockholm, Sweden 1988, in English Thomas Wallgren, Some Remarks on the ‘Brundtland’ report, Lokayan Bulletin 8:2 1990.
xi Antisystemic Movements, Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins ans Immanuel Wallerstein , Verso, 1989
xii How so Helsinki? About the evolution of the Netherlands Helsinki Committee, Piet de Klerk
https://www.nhc.nl/how-so-helsinki-about-the-evolution-of-the-netherlands-helsinki-committee/
xiii Helsinki Committees, OSCE Magazine 3/2010
xiv Our History – Human Rights Watch
https://web.archive.org/web/20140206203626/http://www.hrw.org/node/75134
xvihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki_Process_on_Globalisation_and_Democracy
xvii Global Week Of Action For Peace And Climate Justice
xviii Upcoming political conference divides SA civil society, Imraan Buccus
xix Tutu trust demands closure of exhibition at US govt-funded event amid war against Palestinians
xx “As a whole, it is worrying – One year with the Tidö Agreement” Civil Right Defenders, https://crd.org/2023/12/12/new-report-as-a-whole-it-is-worrying-one-year-with-the-tido-agreement/
xxihttps://civicsolidarity.org/article/helsinki-50-reflection-process/
xxiihttps://civicsolidarity.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Report_seminar-on-civil-society-and-the-OSCE_29.09.24_Helsinki50-Reflection-Project.pdf
xxiiihttps://civicsolidarity.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Report_seminar-on-environmental-security-and-the-OSCE_05.11.24_Helsinki50-Reflection-Project.pdf
xxiv Conference marks 30th anniversary of CSCE Follow-up Meeting in Belgrade
helsinkiplus50.org 