ABSTRACT
Basket III of the OSCE is the “human dimension.” The efforts of the framers of the Helsinki Final Act recognized the impact of the human dimension on larger security concerns, not to mention its application to cooperation. As discussed in Chapter 2, there were several groups of actors in the negotiations from 1973 to 1975. The myriad of actors, many of whom were undemocratic states to begin with, relegated Basket III to cultural and information exchange alone. The human dimension, as expressed in the Final Act is limited to two chapters: “human contacts” and “co-operation and exchanges in the field of culture.” The discourse of “democracy” and “human rights” had been heavily tainted by the Cold War, making a comprehensive view of the human dimension unattainable at the time the Final Act was created.1 However, the times and the organization have changed. Beginning in the late 1980s, the CSCE began to expand on the human dimension. The wave of democratization had already begun with the changes in Portugal, Spain, and Greece and the contagion of democratization was spreading eastward.2 Expanding the human dimension was not only part of supporting democratization and human rights in the EuroAtlantic area, but was also about preventing ethnic conflict, which had already been witnessed in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, as discussed in the previous chapter. Nonetheless, the nature of the CSCE changed with the expansion of the human dimension into the areas of democratization and human rights. This expansion, in turn, had an impact on the organization’s ability to cope with human and societal insecurities. This chapter focuses on the OSCE’s focus on democratization and human rights in the OSCE area.
