Human rights and democracy as a main pillar of the OSCE’s comprehensive security concept Why the OSCE is uniquely placed to tackle new risks and challenges for European security. By Ambassador Gérard Stoudmann In 2000, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) commemorated the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Helsinki Final Act, the birth certificate of the OSCE. Since the beginning of the Helsinki process in the early 1970s – called the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) at that time – the CSCE/OSCE has changed fundamentally. What began as a forum for East-West contacts and a loose sequence of conferences has evolved into an operational pan-European security organization which – on the basis of a comprehensive security concept – deals with preventing conflicts and restoring peace and stability in a region that spans from Vancouver in the West to Vladivostok in the East. From the beginning, the so-called human dimension of the security concept that emerged from Helsinki – human rights, democracy and the rule of law – has played a key role in the Helsinki process and the OSCE conflict 8 9