ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a broad survey of existing European mechanisms for implementation of human rights. The Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) action appears to be largely, but not exclusively, preventive. A growing number of human rights field missions are undertaken by the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the European Union. There are various European organs whose mandates, often broadly worded as 'monitoring', allow them to carry out, inter alia, post facto fact-finding and to initiate some form of dissuasive action. For a long time, periodic state reports were the only system of international supervision under the European Social Charter. However, since the late 1960s, the Court of Justice of the European Communities has gradually built up a remarkable case-law on human rights. In Minsk on 26 May 1995, seven of the 12 states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) signed a new convention on human rights open to all country members of the CIS.
