History

Security and Human Rights is a legacy of the Helsinki process that was designed during the Cold War, to bridge Eastern and Western Europe on the basis of common principles and co-operative security.

Originally titled Helsinki Monitor, it was established in 1990 under the auspices of the Netherlands Helsinki Committee to report on developments in and related to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). In 2008, the Helsinki Monitor became Security and Human Rights, broadening its scope to include the intersection between human rights and security in general, whilst maintaining a focus on the OSCE region.

After a long and fruitful partnership with Brill Academic Publishers, which ended in 2022, the Journal is now entirely self-published and all of its publications are made available in full open access on this website.

Scope

Security and Human Rights looks at the challenge of building security through cooperation across the northern hemisphere, from Vancouver to Vladivostok, as well as how this experience can be applied to other parts of the world. It aims to stimulate thinking on the question of protecting and promoting human rights in a world faced with serious threats to security. Themes that are regularly addressed by Security and Human Rights include:

• Cooperative security
• East-West relations
• European and Euro-Atlantic security
• Conventional arms control
• Conflict prevention
• Mediation and conflict resolution
• Protracted conflicts in the OSCE region
• Cyber security
• Confidence-building measures
• Migration
• Anti-radicalization
• Counter-terrorism
• Activities of OSCE Field Operations
• Economic and environmental aspects of security
• Minority issues
• Democracy-building
• Elections in the OSCE region
• Human rights issues

A New Phase for Security and Human Rights

Message from the Editor-in-Chief, February 21st 2023

I am thrilled to announce a new phase for Security and Human Rights, the journal of the larger Security and Human Rights Monitor platform. After having been affiliated with Brill Academic Publishers for over 30 years, we are now a self-publishing, fully open-access journal!

I would like to thank Brill and especially our contact person Lindy Melman for our excellent cooperation over the years.

Our journal, which was founded in 1990 under the title Helsinki Monitor, is supported by an active editorial office and an editorial board consisting of renowned experts and will continue to follow our high-quality standards that have brought the journal the reputation it currently possesses. However, we want to develop further. This has led, among other things, to our new double-blind peer-review system, our ethics statement, as well as our 30+ year journal archive. This archive, which currently holds all of our publications dating back to 2012, is available here on our website in full open access. The archive is being constantly updated to include older editions of the journal in open access.

In addition to Brill, in particular Lindy Melman, our editorial office led by Managing Editor Marcela Rilovic, as well as the members of editorial board, in particular former Editor-in-Chief Arie Bloed and Web Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Liechtenstein, I would like to thank everyone else who has assisted in bringing the journal where it is now, including our founding organisation the Netherlands Helsinki Committee (NHC) led by Kirstin Meijer, our donors, the peer reviewers and of course the authors, without whom we would not have any content to publish.

We hope we can continue to count on your support to ensure the journal remains the go-to place for all matters related to the (work of the) OSCE as well as on security and human rights issues more generally. In my view, the war in Ukraine (to which we will dedicate a special issue later this year), the rising tensions between East and West and the relentless pressure on human rights under the justification of security, for instance in the counter-terrorism context, are just a few examples showing the continuing relevancy of our journal, which, as of today, will be accessible to anyone.

Please do not hesitate to reach out to us by contacting shr@nhc.nl if you have any feedback that can improve the Security and Human Rights journal or its larger Security and Human Rights Monitor. We look forward to cooperating with you!

Thank you very much,

Christophe Paulussen
Editor-in-Chief
Security and Human Rights

Important Links

• If you wish to submit an article to Security and Human Rights, please refer to our submission guidelines.
• Information on our Editorial and Advisory Boards can be found here.
• We are continually updating our Journal Archive to include older editions of Security and Human Rights/Helsinki Monitor in order to make our 30+ volumes available to researchers in full open access.
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