Helsinki on the Hill

When the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security was adopted in 2000, it marked the first time that the UN Security Council acknowledged the vital role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts. Two decades later, meaningful progress has been made in advancing the equal participation and full involvement of women in peace and security-related efforts, but substantial challenges remain.

In this...

The Chinese Communist Party poses major challenges to the transatlantic community’s ideals of governance and human rights.

In this episode, Didi Kirsten Tatlow, contributing author of the Atlantic Council report “The China Plan,” discusses the Chinese Communist Party’s oppression of its citizens, illustrates how that repression extends to the international system, and offers recommendations on how the transatlantic community, inclu...

From September 10 – 16, ZAPAD 2021—a major Russian military exercise that includes thousands of troops—will take place in and around Belarus. The exercise follows months of reports that the Russian military has been involved in actions that potentially could spark a major and violent confrontation between Russia and other countries, including a March deployment by Moscow of some 100,000 new troops in and around Ukraine and a June i...

The work of the Helsinki Commission aligns closely with that of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the world’s largest regional security organization. The United States supports the work of the OSCE through not only the Helsinki Commission, but also through funding—generally contribution between 11 and 14 percent of the OSCE’s operating costs—and through the deployment of individuals who carry out the a...

The creation of the Moscow Helsinki Group was announced on May 12, 1976, a day that Helsinki Commission Chair Sen. Ben Cardin has called, “One of the major events in the struggle for human rights around the globe.”

The 11 founding members, including legends of the human rights movement like Yuri Orlov and Lyudmila Alexeyeva, came together as what was formally named the Public Group to Assist in the Implementation of the Helsinki Fi...

The upcoming Tokyo Olympics, slated to take place late July after a one-year postponement, will be the first international athletic event since the passage of the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act (RADA) in December 2020, which established criminal penalties on individuals involved in doping fraud conspiracies affecting major international competition. The law, named after Russian doping whistleblower Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, empowers the ...

President Alexander Lukashenko has been in power in Belarus since 1994. In the run-up to elections in the summer of 2020, the Lukashenko regime sought to eliminate political competition to  through disqualification, intimidation, and imprisonment.  

Election Day proper featured widespread allegations of fraud.  Many countries, including the United States, rejected the election’s outcome as illegitimate and refused to recognize Luka...

Election observation is a core element of the OSCE’s efforts to promote human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. Every OSCE participating States—including the United States—pledges to invite foreign observers to observe its elections. The United States plays an active role in OSCE election observation missions, both by providing observers for foreign elections as well as by inviting the OSCE to observe every general and midter...

Only July 11, 1995, more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys from the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina were rounded up, gunned down, and buried in mass graves by Bosnian Serb forces, in what was the worst mass killing in Europe since World War II.

The brutality of the genocide at Srebrenica was compounded by the deliberate effort by those responsible to hide their crimes.  The use of mass graves and the subse...

Reports from nearly every corner of the OSCE region suggest that minority groups and vulnerable populations have been hit especially hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, and sometimes by the policies enacted by governments to address it.

This extended episode of Helsinki on the Hill takes an in-depth look at the pandemic’s impact on minority groups and vulnerable populations, and the role of governments in addressing that impact.

Margare...

Concentrated in post-communist Central and Southern Europe, Roma are the largest ethnic minority in Europe. Roma have historically faced persecution and were the victims of genocide during World War II. In post-communist countries, Roma have suffered disproportionately in the transition to market economies, in part due to endemic racism and discrimination.

Ahead of International Roma Day on April 8, Margareta (Magda) Matache, Direc...

Through participation in parliamentary assemblies, national legislators can wield global influence on issues ranging from counterterrorism to climate change. Roberto Montella, Secretary General of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, and Ruxandra Popa, Secretary General of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, peel back the curtain on activities of their institutions and underscore the value of parliamentary diplomacy in promoting security,...

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan remains one of the world’s most intractable and long-standing territorial and ethnic disputes. Its fragile no-peace, no-war situation poses a serious threat to stability in the South Caucasus region and beyond. The conflict features at its core a fundamental tension between two key tenets of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act: territorial integrity and the right to self-determin...

In Turkmenistan, detainees serving long-term prison sentences often literally “disappear” into the notorious Ovadan Depe prison outside of Ashgabat. Disappeared prisoners have no access to medical care or legal assistance; no information is provided to their families about their well-being.

Current estimates indicate that more than 120 individuals are currently disappeared in Ovadan Depe, including Turkmenistan’s former foreign min...

Well-orchestrated disinformation campaigns by state and non-state actors aim to deceive the public and undermine democracy. President and CEO of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Jamie Fly, Helsinki Commission Senior State Department Advisor Mark Toner, and RFE/RL Journalist Tatiana Vaksberg discuss tools that democracies can use to battle the threat of disinformation by Russia and other malign actors in today’s contested in...