The Human Dimension of the OSCE: An Introduction T his year, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is commemorating the 30th anniversary of the signing of its founding document, the Helsinki Final Act. Since 1975, the OSCE has created a large set of human rights norms and standards that are generally reflective of traditional human rights norms and concepts as enshrined in other international human rights treaties and declarations. Building on these, however, the OSCE has also developed a number of standards that are highly innovative both in terms of style and substance. This publication is intended to make OSCE commitments more accessible to citizens and governmental officials alike, in keeping with one of the most important lessons learned in the Helsinki process. Human rights start with an element of empowerment, or with the “right to know your right”. When the Helsinki Final Act was adopted, participating States were committed to making the document widely accessible. This helped spark the creation of many important human rights groups, such as the Helsinki groups and Charter 77, which found the reference for their work in the Helsinki process and contributed to the collapse of Communist monopoly rule in Central and Eastern Europe. The OSCE human rights framework has thus been one of the most effective human rights frameworks, and it continues to play an important role today. It is a unique framework, comprising a set of documents that, among other innovations, makes human rights an issue of legitimate concern between states. Its basis can be found in the Helsinki Final Act, but subsequent documents such as the 1990 Copenhagen Document and the 1990 Charter of Paris for a New Europe have added other important foundations that are needed to understand the OSCE human dimension as it exists today. The purpose of this article is to provide guidance on how to read and use these norms and to give an introduction to some of the basic aspects of the human dimension of the OSCE.2 2 The Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) was renamed the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in 1994. For practical purposes, only the term OSCE will be used in this article. OSCE Human Dimension Commitments xv