The Charter contains an enumeration of provisions in the two international Covenants on freedom of association, equal protection of the law, privacy of family, home, and correspondence, rights to travel to and from the country, prison conditions, and other human rights norms.
It concludes:

��Responsibility for the maintenance of civic rights in our country naturally devolves in the first place on the political and state authorities. Yet, not only on them: everyone bears his share of responsibility for the conditions that prevail and accordingly also for the observance of legally enshrined agreements, binding upon all citizens as well as upon governments. It is this sense of co-responsibility, our belief in the meaning of voluntary citizens�� involvement and the general need to give new and more effective expression that led us to the idea of creating Charter 77, whose inception we today publicly announce.��

Two decades later, many of the former Charter 77 dissidents are in responsible positions in the Czech government, and the country faces its share of human rights challenges, especially as they affect minorities like the Roma people. This shows how hard a job it is to promote international human rights norms and how their realization requires constant vigilance and action.

Human Rights: Their Gradually Expanding Meaning
The world of international Human Rights has changed greatly since the time of Charter 77. The inescapable conclusion in studying the works contained in this volume is that the meaning of human rights has expanded progressively through recent decades, as has the subject matter of the instruments. For example, the Copenhagen (1990) and Moscow (1991) CSCE documents have elaborate sections on the independence of the judiciary, and in 1985 the UN issued its Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary, followed by comparable standards for Law Enforcement Officials (1979), Lawyers (1990) and Prosecutors (1990), subjects dealt with less extensively in earlier instruments. If the earlier period represented the definition decades, the present period may be called the implementation decades, the time in which international principles become part of, or replace, archaic domestic law and practice.

International Human Rights Laws and Standards, their Domestic Applicability
Many constitutions of the newly independent states state international laws, treaties, and accords have precedence over domestic laws and, if there is a conflict with domestic law, international standards will prevail. Typical of such provisions is Article 15.4 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, 1993:

The commonly recognized principles and norms of the international law and international treaties of the Russian Federation shall be a component part of its legal system. If an international treaty of the Russian Federation stipulates other rules than those stipulated by law, the rules of the international treaty shall apply.

The legal status of these documents varies, but their moral importance is never in question, nor is their place as internationally accepted human rights norms, which most nations have accepted domestically as the standards by which modern democratic states are governed.
     A way of picturing the interaction of UN, Council of Europe, and CSCE documents is to visualize an overlay of three interacting colors, each retaining its distinctiveness, while blending with the others. Taken collectively, they represent an encompassing statement of international human rights standards at this century��s end.
     A leading European jurist, Antonio La Pergola, President of the Venice Commission, former Chief Justice of the Italian Supreme Court and a member of the European Court of Justice, has explained the origins of the growing acceptance of international law over domestic law. ��This widespread tradition of internationalism in European constitutional law,�� he writes, ��goes back to that Indian summer of peace between the world wars��. It was only a transient season, true, before the aggressive mood of nationalism set in to sow the seeds of conflict. Who could deny, however, that the legalism of the esprit de Genève has with the help of hindsight been revisited and improved by the new esprit de Strasbourg after World War II?�� La Pergola draws a parallel between today��s preponderance of international law over domestic law in Europe and the newly independent states of Eurasia with an earlier preponderance of national law over municipal law, as seen in Article 55 of the French constitution, Article 25 of the German constitution, Article 9 of the Austrian constitution, Article 10 of the Italian constitution and Article 96 of the Spanish constitution. ¹

Various Human Rights Instruments, One Direction
Covenants, protocols and conventions are legally binding on states that have ratified or acceded to them. Declarations, principles, guidelines, recommendations and acts, like the CSCE accords, are not legally binding in the way the European Convention of Human Rights is a binding instrument. But they emerge from the common ground of post-World War II Europe, in which the nation states reaffirm and deepen their commitment to human dignity and democratic governance, rejecting totalitarian and violent behavior in civic life. Most represent politically binding commitments.
     Human rights is understandably a contentious subject. There is always a gap between the ideal and the real. For many years, authoritarian governments argued international human rights norms stopped at the national frontier, and to advocate their further inland journey amounted to ��interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.�� Some states also argued ��We are not ready for democracy as the west knows it yet. Economic rights and internal security come first, human rights come later.��
     Such arguments miss the point. Most modern states are party to numerous international agreements relating directly to what happens internally in a given country. Many constitutions of newly independent states contain provisions similar to that of the Russian Federation��s constitution (Article 15.4) that both acknowledges the domestic applicability of international law and treaties and gives them precedence over local law. The CSCE Moscow Meeting on the Human Dimension, October 3, 1991, stated ��the commitments undertaken in the field of the human dimension��are matters of direct and legitimate concern to all participating States and do not belong exclusively to the internal affairs of the States concerned.�� A year earlier, the 1990 Charter of Paris for a New Europe CSCE document stated:

We undertake to build, consolidate and strengthen democracy as the only system of government of our nations. In this endeavor, we will abide by the following:
     Human rights and fundamental freedoms are the birthright of all human beings, are inalienable and are guaranteed by law. Their protection and promotion is the first responsibility of government. Respect for them is the first responsibility of government. Respect for them is an essential safeguard against an over-mighty State. Their observance and full exercise are the foundations of freedom, justice and peace.

As for the argument that political and economic development takes precedence over human rights, this is both legally and socially unsound. Once countries have become parties to international conventions and join international organizations, they have covenant obligations to implement the new laws and norms to which they have subscribed. Moreover, economic growth does not take place in a legal vacuum. In a growing number of countries, sound laws and an independent judiciary provide the platform on which economic growth takes place. If local citizens and international business firms know their rights will be respected, and an independent, fair, and honest mechanism to resolve disputes exists, a climate attracting individual entrepreneurship and corporate investment is created.

A Trend Toward Greater Protections
A unique feature of European constitutions is the prevalence of both individual and social rights. Sometimes these are called first and second generation rights. The first generation is traceable to the Enlightenment and to French and American constitutional thought. Discussing the growth of the idea of human rights in contemporary central and eastern Europe the well-known Polish constitutionalist, Hanna Suchocka, has written: ��A characteristic feature of all post-communist countries is the exceptionally strong emphasis they place in their constitutions on the value of freedom and human dignity. More strongly stressed than in Western constitutions is the need to protect human dignity. In fact, human dignity has become the central point of reference when defining the rights and freedoms of the individual.�� This emphasis, no doubt, is a reaction to the previous regimes disregard for the words of the 1990 Copenhagen Document about ��the supreme value of the human personality.��
     On the question of minority rights, Ms. Suchocka, who dealt with these questions as Prime Minister of Poland, has written ��the problem of national minorities and the protection of their rights has become a European constitutional issue only fairly recently. The constitutions of the nineteenth century did not really deal with that problem. The European Convention also lacks proper regulations in the area of minority rights. Reflecting the European tradition of protecting individual rights, the European Convention in Article 14 merely alludes to the principle of equality and bans discrimination. In this respect the constitutions of the post-communist countries differ markedly from traditional Western European ones.�� ²
     The European significance of both individual and social rights is expressed in Judgment No. 25/81 of the Spanish Constitutional Court of July 14, 1981 which states: ��In the first place��there are subjective rights, rights of individuals. At the same time, there are essential elements of the objective legal order of the national community, when that community takes shape as the framework of the common form of life which is human, just and peaceful.�� Social or community rights emerge from the political ferment of nineteenth and twentieth century Europe, especially from social democrat, socialist, and Christian democratic movements.
     In recent years, a third generation of rights, such as rights to a clean environment, have been added to many constitutions. The question jurists face becomes: to what extent are these rights justiciable? It is a given that human rights violations are actionable in court, and the content of most of the documents in this volume is about human rights. As for social rights, many constitutionalists see them as aspirational rights, rights toward which the society aspires, and should progressively devote its resources. They argue that, even if the rights cannot be fully enforced at present, they describe what a democratic society aspires to, and serve as a guide to legislators, members of the executive, and the judiciary in understanding what the constitutional drafters, on behalf of the people, believe are the legitimate components of a democratic society.
     The trend in international human rights law in recent decades has been toward greater internal and international protection of individual human rights, as well as protection of minority groups. Access to due process and equal protection under the law, including remedies and corrective action, are also increasingly a feature of modern human rights instruments.
     Admittedly, the enforcement of international human rights law and norms is incomplete and at times inadequate. Remedies are hard to come by. Corrective legislation and action take a long time to achieve. But the growth of local and international human rights organizations, most of them non-official, is unprecedented, as is media attention to human rights. For example, many law schools encourage their students to assist petitioners with human rights cases as part of the students�� training and in an effort to build a modern legal culture in a given country.
     Thus an international political climate is emerging where the protection of human rights has become a highly-visible, high priority in the life of nations. While gains are uneven, no responsible political or legal leader would advocate a return to despotism. The lack of resources is real, as is the lack of training for many public officials called upon to implement the new laws and standards. Still, the nature of the dialogue has changed greatly in recent decades as the quest for human rights has moved from the international to the local arena.

The OSCE Contribution
The CSCE process dates to the mid-1970s as a forum for East-West contact during the Cold War. (The ��Conference�� became the ��Organization�� for Security and Cooperation in Europe in December 1994 making a temporary body permanent and giving it greater stability and effectiveness.) The watershed event in CSCE��s history was the August 1975 signing of the Helsinki Accords, opening eastern Europe to the free flow of information, freer travel, and acceptance of international human rights norms. In recent years, CSCE��s more than fifty participating states were forced to rethink the organization��s role. The Warsaw office ��ODIHR, the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights,�� is responsible for human dimension issues, which includes the protection of human rights, free elections, protection of minorities, and support of Rule of Law and democratic institutions. The origin of these activities is the 1975 Helsinki Accords, Basket I (European security issues) and Basket III (humanitarian issues). Original negotiating drafts were placed in separate baskets and the name was retained. Human rights standards were further refined in CSCE meetings in Paris, Copenhagen, and Moscow and at a second Helsinki Summit in 1992. At each meeting definitions of human rights were expanded and accepted as binding commitments. Qualifications diminished; increasingly clearer standards were expounded, the map of Europe��s human rights future became clearly laid out.
     OSCE works through an annual meeting of heads of state or foreign ministers but day-to-day governance is through weekly meetings of the Permanent Council, a Vienna-based group, and the Secretary General, a senior diplomat with administrative responsibilities to run the organization.
     ODIHR helps countries modernize judicial systems, trains ombudspersons, and monitors elections. The Warsaw office also supports OSCE field missions in Moldova, Latvia, Georgia, Tajikistan and elsewhere. These OSCE missions are like foresters tracking smoldering brush fires, registering the extent of political and ethnic discontent. Such preventative diplomacy missions exert a stabilizing influence in places like Estonia, Moldova, and Tajikistan, and transmit reports of problems, such as conflict between factions over an election��s outcome or minority unrest, to the Permanent Council in Vienna.
     Each year OSCE holds several public policy issue seminars, which are organized by ODIHR on human dimension issues suggested by the Permanent Council. The gatherings are usually held in Warsaw, often at the old Warsaw Pact conference headquarters on the town��s edge. Recent topics include work conditions for migrant workers, Roma (Gypsy) populations, free media, minorities, and human rights standards in various countries.
     Usually many non-governmental organizations attend such events. NGOs, like the Quakers, Helsinki Watch, and Amnesty International, keep human rights issues in the forefront of a country��s political agenda. Probing questions by NGOs permit difficult topics to be raised and the seminars are an important mechanism for interest groups to give human rights issues a public hearing. In short, citizens�� groups in any given country have wide possibilities to engage in an international human rights dialogue. In addition to seminars, OSCE has a number of monitoring capabilities which include the periodic high level Implementation and Review Meetings allowing NGOs to table complaints. OSCE has broad possibilities to work as a conflict resolution and monitoring mechanism.

ODIHR in Warsaw
ODIHR��s office was established originally as the Office of Free Elections, beginning work in April 1991. The office��s original mandate was to assist new countries of central and eastern Europe in holding free elections.
The early 1990s witnessed a postCommunist wave of parliamentary, presidential, and local elections, plus constitutional and other referenda. Countries asked basic questions about who should vote? How are elections conducted? Votes counted? Elections disputes resolved? ODIHR invited international experts from North America and Western Europe, and increasingly from Eastern Europe, to training seminars for election officials in the former Soviet Union and nearby countries. The office sent election observers to the former Yugoslavia, Poland, Bulgaria, Albania, Romania, Estonia, Georgia, Belarus and Lithuania. It reviewed draft electoral laws and provided international commentary on the electoral laws of many countries including Bulgaria, Albania, and countries of the former Yugoslavia. In the West, election law was long-established. Most basic questions of who can vote have been long-settled, but in the East, all this was new: who can vote, what is acceptable political speech, who controls the electoral process are central questions in the political life of new nations.
     The office��s elections role soon broadened in response to changing political demands. The number of CSCE member states increased with the breakup of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. At the same time, states realized free elections alone cannot guarantee democracy. A country must both demonstrate respect for human rights and cultivate a democratic infrastructure with independent legal institutions, free media, and respect for international human rights norms.

A Broader Role
CSCE��s Council of Ministers, meeting in Prague in January 1992, expanded the Office of Free Elections into the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, making the office responsible for managing the ��Human Dimension Mechanism,�� a means of addressing human rights concerns within OSCE participating states. Each participating CSCE state furnishes an official list of experts from which the office may draw for missions to report on human rights problems. This is done by activating the Human Dimension Mechanism, which requires the support of CSCE member states. During 1992 the Mechanism was activated three times. First, by the United Kingdom on behalf of the European Community in relation to Serbia; second, by the same parties regarding Bosnia-Herzegovina, and third, by Estonia for a mission on its own territory, protesting alleged Russian Federation interference in its domestic affairs.

The High Commissioner on National Minorities
In 1992 the CSCE created the office of the High Commissioner on National Minorities, the HCNM, whose mandate, as defined in the Helsinki Summit Declaration (23) states:

The High Commissioner will provide ��early warning�� and, as appropriate, ��early action�� at the earliest possible stage in regard to tensions involving national minority issues which have not yet developed beyond an early warning stage, but, in the judgment of the High Commissioner, have the potential to develop into a conflict within the CSCE area, affecting peace, stability or relations between participating States, requiring the attention of and action by the Council [of Ministers of Foreign Affairs] or the CSCE [Committee of Senior Officials].

The Commissioner is given considerable flexibility and independence of action, being able to ��work in confidence and��act independently of all parties involved in the tensions.�� The Copenhagen Concluding Document of 1990 elaborated basic minority issue commitments in sections IV.30��40, commitments expanded the following year in the Moscow Concluding Document, the 1991 Meeting of Experts on National Minorities in Geneva and the 1992 Helsinki Summit Declaration, which details the High Commissioner��s mandate. (These documents are contained in the OSCE section of this volume.)
     The High Commissioner does not deal with individual human rights complaints, nor does the office act in an advocacy role on behalf of specific minority groups. Instead, the High Commissioner is an independent interlocutor who seeks solutions acceptable to both a minority population and the government of the state in which they live. This office is given considerable flexibility. The High Commissioner can become engaged with a problem at his or her own initiative, since arguably all states have already given their consent to the HCNM��s engagement by adopting the Helsinki ��92 mandate.
     Since the office��s inception in 1993, the High Commissioner has worked on resolving minority tensions in Albania (Greek minorities), Estonia, (the former Yugoslav Republic of) Macedonia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Moldova, Romania (Hungarian minorities), Slovakia (Hungarian minorities), Hungary (Slovak minority), and Ukraine. In several of these states, the problems of Russian minorities were the focus of the HCNM��s attention. In addition to fact-finding the High Commissioner promotes dialogue, confidence-building, and cooperation between minority and majority populations, a long-term process in many cases.

The Medias�� Role in Democratic Societies
No institution is more important to the development of democratic societies than free media. Free media can help keep governments transparent and honest, turning the cold light of public scrutiny on nepotism, corruption, secret deals, contracts awarded to friends or relatives of those in power, and other abuses of public trust at the local, regional and national level. At the same time, journalists can often be wrong, have incomplete or inaccurate information, represent their own political, social, or economic interests and be influenced improperly by powerful or affluent organizations and individuals representing special interests.
     In recent years international organizations have paid considerable attention to media issues and their relationship to the modern democratic state. Two especially valuable publications are Recommendations Adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in the MediaField, DH-MM (94) 2 and European Ministerial Conferences on Mass Media Policy: Texts Adopted, DH-MM (95) 4, both published by the Council of Europe��s Directorate of Human Rights, Strasbourg, France.
     The subject matter of these resolutions includes ��the Right to Reply�� the Position of the Individual in Relation to the Press�� (74) 26, ��On Access to Information Held by Public Authorities�� (81) 19, ��Strategies to Combat Smoking, Alcohol and Drug Dependence in Cooperation with Opinion Makers and the Media�� (86) 14, ��Measures to Combat Piracy in the Field of Copyright�� (88) 2 and ��Principles on the Distribution of Videograms having a Violent, Brutal or Pornographic Content�� (89) 7.
     An important recommendation of the Committee of Ministers (96) 10 is ��On Guarantees of the Independence of Public Service Broadcasting,�� September 11, 1996. The resolution reaffirms ��the vital role of public service broadcasting as an essential factor of pluralistic communication which is accessible to everyone at both national and regional levels, through the provision of a basic comprehensive program service comprising information, education, culture and entertainment.�� The recommendation outlines legal considerations in organizing and managing public service broadcasting organizations.

A Word of Caution
A word of caution is in order. While the intention of this volume is to assemble most of the major UN, CSCE and OSCE and Council of Europe human rights documents in a single work, their realization in a given country is first of all a local matter. It is difficult to appeal to an international agency, and even the most accessible, the European Commission on Human Rights, will only consider a case after all domestic possibilities for its resolution are exhausted. For example, less than ten percent of cases filed with the Commission are considered admissible in any given year; most applications are rejected because domestic laws were found adequate to cover the complaint.

Preparing a Human Rights Complaint for Filing
This volume contains broad guidelines for filing a human rights complaint. Each country will have different procedures but all will require careful preparation of a dispassionate, factual complaint and knowing local laws and procedural codes. Apart from an individual complaint before a governmental body, there are numerous steps a person or an organization can take to bring their situation to public attention. These can include class action suits, suits brought by a group of people against a government or another party, and international media coverage, and contact with friendly states sympathetic to human rights issues through their embassies or foreign ministries. States may engage in ��quiet diplomacy�� through unpublicized diplomatic contacts to resolve complaints or, in extreme cases, resort to public statements about a violation, or introduce sanctions, such as forbidding visas to the violating countries�� officials for travel. These measures, however, are infrequent; ultimately human rights violations must be solved in the local arena.
     It is important to note that international human rights law applies first to states and not to individuals. Individuals must first resort to domestic law and then ascertain the country��s relationship with international organizations such as the United Nations, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and Council of Europe, asking if the country is a member of one or all of these organizations? Has it ratified their human rights instruments? Were these ratified with reservations limiting their applicability? Does the country have a constitutional article assuring the applicability of international law and treaty obligations over domestic law? Does the country��s foreign policy seek to bring the country into the wider community of nations, with its attendant developmental aspects, such as a greater attraction for foreign investment because there is a stable rule of law climate? These are all factors to be weighed in pursuing a human rights claim.