Known formally as the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), the Helsinki Final Act was a product of the Cold War agenda. The conference process opened in Helsinki in November 1972, continued sporadically in other European capitals, and concluded in Helsinki on August 1, 1975.
The State Department reports reflect both new priorities in the US government's human rights agenda, and old problems inherent in this type of reporting.
The US State Department evaluates human rights conditions of the eight nations of the Caucasus and Central in its twenty-second Annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. The country reports, released on February 25, describe conditions as "uneven" in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan; "poor" in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan; and "extremely poor" in Turkmenistan.
One of the human rights that has seen significant improvement since the fall of the Soviet Union is the right to free speech. Today, all but two CIS states --Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan -- have abolished state censorship. (Azerbaijan joined those ranks only last year, as a precondition for accession to the Council of Europe.)
Tensions in Dagestan have receded somewhat since last week, when overwhelming Russian force compelled a group of rebels led by Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev to withdraw from villages they had occupied in southwestern Dagestan. The new government of Vladimir Putin has portrayed the episode as a decisive victory for Moscow over Islamic separatism, and this is true to a certain extent.
