Establishing a Helsinki Community: Transnational Human Rights Activism in the 1970s

In Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World, Akira Iriye explains that the rise of non-governmental organizations in the 1960s and 1970s “[led] the world in a different direction.”  My paper will argue that the wave of monitoring groups that developed in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in the aftermath of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act reframed the content and significance of the agreement, using it to advance human rights in Eastern Europe.

The promise to evaluate Helsinki implementation at the Belgrade Follow-up Meeting in 1977 provided the rationale for establishing the United States Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, forming international human rights groups such as the Moscow Helsinki Group and Helsinki Watch, and increasing the American role in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) follow-up meetings.  As a result of the transnational network that formed in its wake, the Helsinki Final Act came to play a powerful role in transforming European politics and society. 

Independent monitoring efforts flourished across CSCE states in the 1970s, and activists reached out to one another through various means.  Their goals were to influence Western politicians and diplomats to make human rights an essential part of East-West diplomacy and later to induce Eastern European and Soviet policymakers to undertake reform.

By the early 1980s, Helsinki Watch recognized that formalizing connections among like-minded groups could facilitate more effective human rights advocacy.  As such, Helsinki Watch initiated the formation of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, or IHF as it was called, which established a formal umbrella organization for Western, neutral, and Eastern national Helsinki committees. 

My paper will analyze the rise and influence of a transnational Helsinki network in the late 1970s.