Helsinki Committees for Human Rights exist in many European countries (and in the wider OSCE region) as volunteer, non-profit organizations devoted to the protection of human rights. It was presumably named after the Helsinki Accords. It was formerly organized into the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF), based in Vienna.

History

The Helsinki Committees began as Helsinki Watch groups. The first one was founded in the Soviet Union in 1976, the second in 1977 in Czechoslovakia, the third in 1979 in Poland. In 1982, representatives of several of these committees held an International Citizens Helsinki Watch Conference and founded the IHF. In 1992, a British Helsinki Human Rights Group was established in the UK, but this group was always completely independent of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights. The UK's official representative in the IHF is the British Helsinki Subcommittee of the Parliamentary Human Rights Group, established in 1976.

Country organizations