The Right of the Individual to Know and Act upon His Rights and Duties: Monitoring Groups and the Helsinki Final Act

Authors

• Virginia A. Leary Professor of Law,, University of New York at Buffalo

First Page

375

Abstract

The provisions of the Helsinki Final Act relating to human rights stimulated a most extraordinary and probably unforeseen development the creation of ad hoc private citizen monitoring groups in signatory countries. No other international instrument on human rights has had a similar effect. The activities of these monitoring groups cannot be over emphasized. The phrase in Principle VII of the Final Act that the signatory states confirm the right of the individual to know and act upon his rights and duties constituted international recognition of the legitimacy of participation by private individuals in the monitoring of their own country's conformity with the Act.

Recommended Citation

Virginia A. Leary Professor of Law,, The Right of the Individual to Know and Act upon His Rights and Duties: Monitoring Groups and the Helsinki Final Act, 13 Vanderbilt Law Review 375 (1980)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/vjtl/vol13/iss1/13