TITLE:
The Changing Human Rights Discourse and the Helsinki Final Act
AUTHORS:
Saman Adiban
KEYWORDS:
Helsinki Final Act, International Human Rights Discourse, Human Rights and International Security
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.12 No.9,
September
20,
2024
ABSTRACT: 1975 Helsinki Final Act among thirty-five European and North American Nations spurred the creation of a transnational network of human rights activists who demanded compliance from participating states, especially the Socialist governments of the Eastern bloc, with the human rights provisions contained in the Final Act. However, human rights provisions in the Helsinki Final Act did not constitute groundbreaking innovations; the agreement itself was not binding according to the principles of international law as it represented a declaration of intention rather than a legally binding international treaty. As will be argued in this paper, the real achievement of the Helsinki Final Act is the transformations in the meanings and perceptions of fundamental concepts underlying the international system that the agreement itself, regardless of the process that followed it, introduced. The argument is that the Final Act, rather than transforming the content of the human rights norms or making innovations in the tradition, helped them transcend from state obligations under international law to matters of international security in that the agreement established how states treated their own citizens within their national borders are matters of legitimate concerns for other states due to their potential implications for regional and international peace and security.