The
Helsinki Accords, which have been credited for the rise of meaningful human rights concessions under Gorbachev and thus aiding the eventual fall of the Iron Curtain, were effective because of the intersection between politics and law.
38) The following two parts take up two international human rights instruments, the Nuremberg Code and the
Helsinki Accord, respectively, and apply their standards to cases of involuntary "medical" intervention.
The most notorious action was the conviction of the noted playwright and human rights activist Vaclav Havel in February, just after Czechoslovakia had initiated the Vienna Concluding Agreement, refining and expanding the 1975
Helsinki Accords on basic human rights.
Today, May 12, marks the 40th anniversary of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a human rights organization created to monitor the Soviet Union's compliance with the
Helsinki Accords.
Dealing with other international issues, the statement called for endorsement of the
Helsinki Accords and the principles of the first Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, held in Helsinki, Finland, in 1975.
It was Congress that set up its own Helsinki Commission to monitor Soviet compliance with its pledges made as part of the
Helsinki accords, which recognized postwar Eastern European boundaries in exchange for Soviet acceptance of human rights standards.
Now, 40 years since the
Helsinki Accords established what would become the OSCE, Ukraine has become one of the organization's most important challenges.
The
Helsinki Accords had loosened up satellite transmissions and McNeill went on the streets and in their faces.
The
Helsinki Accords signed on August 1 1975 also promoted the feeling that Europe despite the ideological division was one continent and that the fate of all its countries was inter-linked.
Ford courageously defied domestic disapproval, flew to Finland, and signed the
Helsinki Accords, as they came to be known, and in doing so did as much, if not more, to bring about the collapse of communism than Ronald Reagan did years later.
He corrects a misperception common in English-language literature that the
Helsinki Accords of 1976 provided the impetus for the Charter, pointing out that reference to the Accords was almost an afterthought and that the primary motivation lay in local philosophy and circumstances.
During the negotiations that produced the
Helsinki Accords, members of the European Community chose not to sit back and let the United States and Soviet Union forge a superpower "entente" that ignored Western-European interests and perpetuated the status quo in Europe.
