Aishwarya rai family Photos and video with Aaradhaya, abhishek & amitabh bachchan family
It is no exaggeration to say that the Helsinki Final Act changed the world.
It was an unusual international treaty and not only in terms of the number of countries involved.
This treaty was an unprecedented in the history of diplomacy, and its observance was vigorously pushed for not only by the politicians in power,
but also by the citizens of the countries that signed it.
This was due to the fact that the Helsinki agreements linked international security to the respect for human rights in all the countries that signed.
The idea of this linkage lead to the emergence of human rights organizations in the USSR and the Soviet bloc countries, where human rights violations were appalling.
The first organization of this kind appeared in the USSR, and was called the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG).
Its founder and first Chairman, Yuri Fedorovich Orlov, conceived and created it on the basis of the human rights articles of the Helsinki Final Act
which the Soviet Union had to implement, and whose implementation was subject to scrutiny by democratic countries who had signed the treaty.
The Soviet leaders hoped, of course, that if they did not implement the human rights articles, the democratic states that had signed the Helsinki agreements would turn a blind eye to it,
as long as the most prominent Jewish activists seeking to leave for Israel were released from the USSR.
The MHG sought to ensure the full implementation of the Helsinki agreements, including the human rights articles.
Officially, the MHG was named "Public Group for Promoting the Implementation of Helsinki agreements in the USSR".
How did we contribute to this goal?
We monitored the cases of failure to implement the human rights-related commitments of the Helsinki agreements
across the USSR, and reported these cases to the governments of all the countries that had signed the agreements.
This task was seemingly impossible for such a small organization as our MHG
but we were able to fulfil it, because we began to receive the necessary information from religious, national and other organizations,
as well as individuals from all parts of our vast country.
The idea of building on the human rights articles of the Helsinki agreements turned out to be very fruitful in the USSR,
and Helsinki groups emerged in four Soviet republics – Ukraine, Lithuania, Georgia and Armenia –
and later on in several Soviet satellite countries.
Subsequently, they began to appear in the democratic countries that had signed the Helsinki agreements.
The first was in Norway, then in the United States, the Netherlands, Canada and in many other countries.
They aimed to support the Helsinki groups in the USSR and in its dependent countries,
because these groups and their members were prosecuted in these countries.
An international Helsinki movement was born.
The momentum for this movement came from the human rights articles of the Helsinki agreements.
The international Helsinki movement has greatly expanded the scope of human rights protection.
The influence, visibility and renown of human rights defenders made respect for the rights of citizens mandatory for the governments of democratic countries,
and for those seeking to become democratic countries, and forced the authorities in those countries that wanted to be considered as democratic
to pretend and publicly declare that they respected their citizens' rights.
Thus, the Helsinki agreements contributed to the development of human rights movements in all of the participating States
and helped unite human rights defenders in the democratic Western countries with human rights defenders in the USSR and the Soviet bloc countries.
The international human rights movement was justly dubbed "the Helsinki movement".
I consider this to be the most important outcome of the Helsinki agreements.
Is something like that possible today, 40 years later?
Nowadays, it should be a movement based on the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms,
which provides for a wide range of civil and social rights.
The current international human rights movement should, like the Helsinki movement,
raise the countries where human rights are constantly violated to the level of the most democratic countries in today's world world.
It is equally important to help people in poor countries overcome poverty.
That is, we need to promote social rights along with the civil rights.
This is a very difficult task.
To achieve progress, we shall need years and years of effort.
But only by addressing both these problems can we protect the world from wars
and prosperous countries from the huge influx of peoples from war-torn countries and poor countries from all over the world.
Like forty years ago, addressing these formidable challenges is not within the grasp of governments and politicians alone.
This requires joint efforts both by the citizens and the authorities in all the countries, especially those already having experience of uniting in efforts within the OSCE.
The governments of these countries should fully support the civil society's efforts in achieving these goals.
I would hope that such solidarity between authorities and society is possible in a considerable number of countries.
And I would hope that the efforts to uphold human rights and overcome poverty will lead to visible results, even if not so soon.
After all, it was thanks to mass support that the tiny Moscow Helsinki Group succeeded in achieving its seemingly impossible goal
to force the USSR and the Soviet bloc countries to comply with their obligations as part of the "third basket" of the Helsinki Final Act.
This experience inspires hope for the possibility of success in addressing the challenges that we are facing today.
Thank you for your attention.
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