Human rights and the Helsinki process
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After World War II, international concern for human rights was evident at the global level outside the UN as well as within it, most notably in the proceedings and aftermath of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), convened in Helsinki, Finland, on July 3, 1973, and concluded there (after continuing deliberations in Geneva) on August 1, 1975. Attended by representatives of 35 governments—including the NATO countries, the Warsaw Pact nations, and 13 neutral and nonaligned European states—the conference had as its principal purpose a mutually satisfactory definition of peace and stability between East and West, previously made impossible by the Cold War. In particular, the Soviet Union wished to gain recognition of its western frontiers as established at the end of World War II (which ended without the conclusion of an omnibus peace treaty). The West, with no realistic territorial claims of its own, sought concessions primarily on security requirements and human rights, largely in that order.
The Final Act of the conference, also known as the Helsinki Accords, begins with a Declaration on Principles Guiding Relations between Participating States, in which the participating states solemnly declare “their determination to respect and put into practice,” alongside other “guiding” principles, “respect [for] human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief” and “respect [for] the equal rights of peoples and their right to self-determination.” It was hoped that this declaration, the importance of which is reflected in its having been signed by almost all of the principal governmental leaders of the day, would mark the beginning of a liberalization of authoritarian regimes.
From the earliest discussions, however, it was clear that the Helsinki Final Act was not intended as a legally binding instrument. The expressions “determination to respect” and “put into practice” were seen to represent moral commitments only, the Declaration of Principles was said not to prescribe international law, and nowhere did the participants provide for enforcement machinery. On the other hand, the Declaration of Principles, including its human rights principles, was always viewed as being at least consistent with international law; and, in providing for periodic follow-up conferences, it made possible a unique negotiating process (the “Helsinki process”) to review compliance with its terms, thus creating normative expectations concerning the conduct of the participating states. In these ways, the declaration, ergo the Helsinki Final Act, proved to be an important force in the fall of the Iron Curtain and the transformation of eastern Europe in 1989–90.
The Helsinki process, involving long-running “follow-up,” “summit,” and other meetings, served also to establish a mechanism for the evolution of the CSCE from a forum for discussion to an operational institution, beginning with the adoption of the Charter of Paris for a New Europe in 1990. In 1994 the CSCE was renamed the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and its principal organs and bureaus eventually included an Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (in Warsaw), a Conflict Prevention Centre (in Vienna), a High Commissioner on National Minorities (in The Hague), and a Court of Conciliation and Arbitration (in Geneva). These offices were increasingly pressed into service to alleviate major deprivations of human rights, particularly those arising from ethnic conflicts. In addition, the Vienna Human Dimension Mechanism and the Moscow Human Dimension Mechanism provide a preliminary formal means of raising and seeking to resolve disputes about violations of human rights commitments, including the possibility of on-site investigation by independent experts. All these mechanisms bespeak, however, an essentially interstate process; neither individuals nor nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have access to them except indirectly as suppliers of information and conveyors of political pressure. They thus contrast markedly with the individual-complaint procedures that are available within the UN system and in regional human rights systems.
Regional human rights systems and developments
Action for the international promotion and protection of human rights has proceeded at the regional level in Europe, the Americas, Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. By the first decade of the 21st century, however, only the first four of these regions had created enforcement mechanisms within the framework of a human rights charter.
Human rights in Europe
On November 4, 1950, the Council of Europe agreed to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the substantive provisions of which were based on a draft of what is now the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Together with its 11 additional protocols, this convention, which entered into force on September 3, 1953, represents the most advanced and successful international experiment in the field to date. Over the years, the enforcement mechanisms created by the convention have developed a considerable body of case law on questions regulated by the convention, which the state parties typically have honoured and respected. In some European states the provisions of the convention are deemed to be part of domestic constitutional or statutory law. Where this is not the case, the state parties have taken other measures to make their domestic laws conform with their obligations under the convention.
Notwithstanding these successes, a significant streamlining of the European human rights regime took place on November 1, 1998, when Protocol No. 11 to the convention entered into force. Pursuant to the protocol, two of the enforcement mechanisms created by the convention—the European Commission of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights—were merged into a reconstituted court, which now is empowered to hear individual (as opposed to interstate) petitions or complaints without the prior approval of the local government. The decisions of the court are final and binding on the state parties to the convention.
A companion instrument to the European convention—similar to but preceding the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights—is the European Social Charter (1961) and its additional protocol (1988). In contrast to the adjudicatory enforcement procedures of the European convention, the charter’s provisions are implemented through an elaborate system of control based on progress reports to the various committees and organs of the Council of Europe. The revised European Social Charter, which was intended gradually to replace the 1961 charter and entered into force in 1999, modernizes its forebear’s substantive provisions and strengthens its enforcement capabilities. The basic rights set forth in the revised charter concern housing; health; education, labour rights, employment, and parental leave; protection from poverty and social exclusion; free movement of persons and nondiscrimination; migrant worker rights; and nondiscrimination of persons with disabilities.
Human rights in the Americas
In 1948, concurrent with its establishment of the Organization of American States (OAS), the Ninth Pan-American Conference adopted the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, which, unlike the Universal Declaration of the UN adopted seven months later, set out the duties as well as the rights of individual citizens. Subsequently, in 1959, a meeting of the American Ministers for Foreign Affairs created the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which has since undertaken important investigative activities in the region. Finally, in 1969, the Inter-American Specialized Conference on Human Rights adopted the American Convention on Human Rights, which, among other things, after entering into force in July 1978, made the existing Inter-American Commission an organ of the convention and established the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which sits in San José, Costa Rica. In November 1988, the OAS adopted the Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Of the 26 Western Hemispheric states that so far have signed the convention, only the United States has yet to ratify it. Nor is the United States a party to the additional protocol, which entered into force in November 1999.
The core structure of the Inter-American human rights system is similar to that of its European counterpart. Nevertheless, some noteworthy differences exist, and three stand out in particular. First, the American convention, reflecting the influence of the American Declaration, acknowledges the relationship between individual duties and individual rights. Second, the American convention reverses the priorities of the European convention prior to Protocol No. 11 by guaranteeing individual petitions while making interstate complaints optional. Finally, both the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights operate beyond the framework of the American convention. The commission is as much an organ of the OAS Charter as of the American convention, with powers and procedures that differ significantly depending on the source of the commission’s authority. The court, while primarily an organ of the convention, nonetheless has jurisdiction to interpret the human rights provisions of other treaties, including those of the OAS Charter.
Human rights in Africa
In 1981 the Eighteenth Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity (replaced by the African Union [AU] in 2002) adopted the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Also known as the “Banjul Charter” for having been drafted in Banjul, Gambia, it entered into force on October 21, 1986, and boasts the vast majority of the states of Africa as parties.
Like its American and early European counterparts, the African charter provides for a human rights commission (the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights), which has both promotional and protective functions. There is no restriction on who may file a complaint with it. In contrast to the European and American procedures, however, concerned states are encouraged to reach a friendly settlement without formally involving the investigative or conciliatory mechanisms of the commission. Also, the African charter did not, at the beginning, call for a human rights court. African customs and traditions, it has been said, have long emphasized mediation, conciliation, and consensus rather than the adversarial and adjudicative procedures that are common to Western legal systems.
Nevertheless, owing largely to political changes wrought by the end of the Cold War, an African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) was created in January 2004 to render judgments on the compliance by AU states with the African charter. The court did not replace the commission.
A year earlier, however, in 2003, there came into being the African Court of Justice (ACJ), intended to serve as the AU’s principal judicial body and, in this capacity, to rule on disputes over the interpretation of AU treaties. Concern for rising costs in the face of little forward movement on the part of the ACJ, however, led to proposals for the creation of a new court, the African Court of Justice and Human Rights (ACJHR). Designed to have two chambers—one for general legal matters that would supersede the ACJ, the other for judgments on the interpretation and application of human rights treaties—the ACJHR came into being when, in 2008, a merger protocol was adopted uniting the ACJ and the ACHPR. It was believed that the ACJHR had the potential to be progressively influential in the protection of human rights in Africa. It was also recognized, however, that this prospect—above all the ACJHR’s legitimacy—depended on the independence and moral character of its judges and on the training and effectiveness of its staff.
It is, in any event, fair to say that the African human rights system was still in its infancy at the beginning of the 21st century, given especially the turmoil and violence that beset northern and sub-Saharan Africa during this time. But four distinctive features of the African charter—and thus, the African human rights system—are noteworthy and give reason for hope. First, the charter provides for economic, social, and cultural rights as well as civil and political rights. In this respect it resembles the American convention and differs from the European convention. Second, in contrast to both the European and American conventions, it recognizes the rights of groups in addition to the family, women, and children. The aged and the infirm are accorded special protection also, and the right of peoples to self-determination is elaborated in the right to existence, equality, and nondomination. Third, it uniquely embraces two third-generation, or “solidarity,” rights: the right to economic, social, and cultural development and the right to national and international peace and security. It differs from other treaties also by detailing individual duties as well as individual rights—to the family, society, the state, and the international African community.
