The Copenhagen Document - An idea whose time had come

Twenty years ago, in the space of a few short months, the barriers dividing Europe into East and West came down so quickly that the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), which had laboured for well over a decade to propel the process, suddenly found itself scrambling to keep up. The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, a wave of democratization swept the Warsaw Treaty states soon after, and by the time the CSCECSCE
Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe Foreign Ministers convened in Copenhagen on 5 June 1990 to open the second of three Human Dimension Conferences that had been mandated by the Vienna Follow-up Meeting less than two years before – in itself a remarkable achievement –, the conference agenda, geared to the long implementation reviews characteristic of Cold War CSCE meetings, had become obsolete.

In typically flexible CSCE style, the delegates shifted their negotiations – made much more complicated by the disappearance of clear, opposing blocs – to four informal working groups that convened parallel to the official sessions. Within three and a half weeks, they compiled 43 new proposals and 36 proposals carried over from the first Human Dimension Conference in Paris the previous year into what remains one of the richest and most definitive internationally agreed catalogues of human and democratic rights in existence.

Hailed at the time by the head of the Soviet negotiating team, Yuri Rehetov, as “a new European constitution”, the Copenhagen Document contains an abundance of unprecedented provisions, on free and democratic elections, the rights of national minorities, including the rights of Roma and Sinti, the right to leave and return to one’s country, the right to enjoy private property, freedom of association, freedom of conscience and freedom of expression. But perhaps what makes the Copenhagen Document most noteworthy, and marks its originality as the document of a security organization, is that it binds human rights commitments to a system of government that is democratic, pluralistic and characterized by the rule of law.

In contrast to traditional human rights agreements, the Copenhagen Document treats rights not just as a matter of the relationship between the state and the individual, but insofar as they are ensured by democratic institutions and taken note of by fellow participating States. The fact that for the first time a human rights provision, permitting the presence of observers at court procedures, is called a “confidence-building measure” – a term theretofore restricted to military arrangements – underlines the fact that this is a document designed to ensure stability – not only within but also among states. This latter aspect of the Copenhagen Document was given further weight at the third Human Dimension Conference held in Moscow in 1991, when participating States declared human rights and democracy to be matters of direct and legitimate concern to all and adopted an enhanced mechanism to verify and express this concern.

 The participating States express their conviction that the protection and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms is one of the basic purposes of government and reaffirm that the recognition of these rights and freedoms constitutes the foundation of freedom, justice and peace.

Copenhagen Document, Article 1

The Copenhagen Document’s understanding of the rule of law is itself outstanding for its substantive breadth. Insisting that it goes beyond just enforcing democratic order, the participating States affirmed that it flows directly from the recognition of human dignity: “[The participating States] consider that the rule of law does not mean merely a formal legality which assures regularity and consistency in the achievement and enforcement of democratic order, but justice based on the recognition and full acceptance of the supreme value of the human personality and guaranteed by institutions providing a framework for its fullest expression.”

German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher spoke of the irresistible strength of an idea whose time had come. “Man with his inherent dignity and inalienable rights is everywhere becoming the yardstick of political and social life,” he said, addressing the Conference.

The Copenhagen Document’s firm bedding of government and the rule of law on the recognition of human dignity is a legacy for the OSCE’s work for security in all its dimensions.