Annual Report 2025

In 2025, we marked the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act with a series of events. In a time of war and setbacks for democracy in Europe, we need to revitalise the Helsinki effect.

The Helsinki effect emerged unexpectedly from the 1970s diplomatic efforts to establish core principles for European security and cooperation. These initiatives were organised into three so-called ‘baskets’: political, economic, and humanitarian cooperation. The 1975 Helsinki Final Act formalised the core principles for such cooperation – known as comprehensive security – and encouraged mobilisation of civil society across both Eastern communist states and Western democracies.

This mobilisation had a notable impact, fostering democracy and respect for human rights in Eastern and Central Europe from the late 1980s onwards. The NHC has proudly been part of this Helsinki movement since 1977, dedicated to supporting its Eastern colleagues and informing the public and decision-makers about the state of human rights.

In 2025, the NHC organised a series of events to mark the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act. However, with a waning Helsinki effect, Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, and setbacks for democratic principles across European nations, the anniversary could not be celebrated as a joyful occasion. The main question guiding the events was how to revitalise the Helsinki effect.

The Helsinki Final Act

On 1 August 1975, the leaders of all European countries except Albania and Andorra, along with the Soviet Union, the United States, and Canada, signed the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). The Act included a Declaration of Principles that guided relations among participating states, mainly reaffirming core principles of international law regarding state sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the peaceful resolution of disputes. It can be described as the UN Charter «made European». However, even though the original UN Charter referred to human rights, the Helsinki Final Act extended further, not only relying on the Charter but also drawing on the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The so-called third basket of the negotiations was the most challenging and significant. It included commitments to facilitate family reunification, marriage and travel across divided Europe, improve working conditions for journalists and expand cultural exchange.

The seventh principle of the Final Act broadened respect for human rights in a way that the Soviet Union had never acknowledged before. It is difficult to fully appreciate the significance of the Final Act today. It committed participating States to «respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion».

While Soviet leaders celebrated the Act for recognising post-war borders and their sphere of influence, they aimed to overlook its inclusion of human rights as a normative principle among the Participating States. Other states insisted that the CSCE—and later the OSCE, established in 1994—should act as defenders of democracy and human rights, collaborating with various civil society organisations that promoted respect for the Helsinki norms and monitored violations.

‘Helsinki 50’ events

Throughout 2025, the NHC organised or participated in several events on the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act. Our main event, “Applying Helsinki Norms for a Better Future,” took place on 12 June in cooperation with the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and NORCAP. The following day, the Norwegian Parliament, in cooperation with the NHC, hosted a seminar marking the anniversary.

The NHC Secretary General joined the official anniversary event in Helsinki on 1 August, hosted by the Finnish OSCE Chairmanship.

The 2025 OSCE Human Dimension Conference in Warsaw in October marked the anniversary by dedicating the conference to the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the OSCE area. As a representative of the Helsinki movement, our Secretary General, Berit Lindeman, gave a keynote speech at the high-level opening session.

At the Arendal Week, the NHC hosted a discussion with Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide on the importance of the Helsinki Final Act. In cooperation with Indie Film, we participated in a series of screenings of the new documentary film “The Helsinki Effect” by the Finnish documentary filmmaker Arthur Franck, including at the Oslo Pix Film Festival and the Movies on War Film Festival, continuing into 2026 with the cinema premiere at Gimle Cinema and an event at the Barents Spektakel.

What is the Helsinki Effect?

Franck’s film, The Helsinki Effect, is named after an influential study by Professor Daniel C. Thomas, which explores how Helsinki norms became a rallying point for democracy and human rights by civil society actors, academics, and social movements in communist countries, as well as by democratic states and civil society in the West.

At the well-attended events, Professor Thomas and other speakers emphasised the significance of the Helsinki norms as an official reference point for human rights work, as a legitimate subject of international scrutiny and diplomacy, and as a shared normative platform for activists, civil society, and sympathetic states to pressure authoritarian governments.

To revitalise the Helsinki effect, we must reaffirm the legitimacy and universality of these norms. It is not because the norms are flawed that governments tend to ignore them; rather, they prioritise narrow national interests, or even more limited elite interests, to maintain power. Human rights are often regarded as secondary norms, even by democratic states, with geopolitical or narrowly defined economic and security interests taking precedence.

To revitalise the norms, transnational security networks and civil society organisations need to be strengthened. Participants at the various events emphasised that support for human rights work should increase, not decrease, to enable systematic documentation of abuses and to hold states and individuals accountable for violations of international norms.

Although international organisations such as the UN, OSCE, and the Council of Europe remain essential for holding states accountable, human rights must be broadened to include social and professional networks. Contrary to common belief, human rights norms are effective—as the Helsinki effect demonstrates.

This is precisely why authoritarian governments seek to undermine them. Democracies, in turn, must protect and promote these norms and support the organisations that defend them.