Fall of the Berlin Wall: Less Repression, More Rights—and More Still to Do

The following article originally appeared in the Fall 2009 Open Society News.

Writing about the work of the Open Society Institute and the Soros foundations since the fall of the Berlin Wall, OSI president Aryeh Neier points to progress but warns of significant challenges that remain.

For a dozen years or so in the period following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, most of the efforts of the Soros foundations network were focused on the former communist countries of what had been the Soviet bloc. While we have extended our work in recent years to all parts of the globe, we still spend a larger share of our resources in what we refer to as "the traditional region" than elsewhere. The results in promoting the rule of law and human rights have been mixed.

With the exception of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, no part of the former Soviet bloc today is as repressive as in Soviet times. Everywhere else, to a greater or lesser degree, it is possible to express and publish critical comments about the government. Except for the Central Asian countries, all countries in the region are subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights, which regularly decides cases requiring governments such as Russia and Ukraine to pay damages or provide other redress to victims of human rights abuses.

The greatest headway by far has been made in the 10 former communist countries that have joined the European Union. Though a number of these countries have had nationalist and populist movements that are antagonistic to minorities, especially the Roma, the incentive of belonging to the European Union has been an important safeguard for rights.

One of the most important contributions of the Soros foundations in the region has been the development of the capacity to secure legal redress for rights violations. We have done so by supporting organizations, including groups that were launched at our initiative, and by training lawyers. In some important cases, we have also participated directly in litigation. Our grantmaking has been led by the Budapest-based Human Rights and Governance Grants Program. The New York-based Open Society Justice Initiative has engaged in litigation in the region.

Previously, litigation had only been a significant factor in rights protection in a handful of countries with common law traditions such as the United States, India, the United Kingdom, and South Africa (where the legal system has both common law and civil law roots). It had been virtually unknown in civil law countries where precedent does not play a crucial role and where positive law—that is, the law as enacted by legislatures—is supreme. Today, however, through our support for legal capacity development in the region, and taking advantage of opportunities for litigation before constitutional courts and supranational bodies such as the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice, rights litigation plays an important role in many civil law countries of the former Soviet bloc.

Several other programs of the Soros foundations network have played a part in the protection of human rights in the region. Three that particularly warrant citation are our Media Program, our Roma programs, and our Public Health Program.

At an early stage, the Media Program provided direct support for independent media in the region. More recently, its efforts have been largely limited to training programs, support for professional associations of journalists and editors, efforts to develop the legal framework for media independence and diversity, and defense of media against interference with free expression. Our Roma programs have included economic development, cultural programs, access to health care, community development, the protection of legal rights, and, above all, education. Our Public Health Program has addressed such questions as the rights of the mentally ill and the intellectually disabled, the rights and welfare of drug addicts and those suffering from HIV and AIDS and tuberculosis, and a range of issues involving sexual minorities.

Despite the significant advances in the protection of rights in most countries of the region in the past two decades, substantial challenges remain. Aside from the United States, which imprisons immense numbers of people for nonviolent drug crimes and has draconian sentencing laws, several of the former Soviet bloc countries have the highest rates of incarceration in the world. The struggle to promote equal protection of the law for the Roma minority has a long way to go. Xenophobic treatment of other minorities is pervasive in some countries in the region. Authoritarian regimes in such countries as Russia and Belarus broadly restrict rights; and, in Russia, there have also been assassinations of journalists, humanitarian workers, and human rights monitors without what appear to be good faith efforts to prosecute and punish those responsible. Plainly, a lot remains to be done in the next 20 years throughout the region to try to protect human rights. As has been the case up to now, the emphasis should be both on the development and support of institutional mechanisms for rights protection and on the enhancement of the capacity of individuals to defend their own rights and the rights of others.

Only fragments of the Berlin Wall are still to be seen as physical reminders of an earlier era. So far as the spirit of the region is concerned, the situation is more complicated. Some of the impediments to the protection of rights are similar to those in the countries that were on the other side of the wall. Others are legacies of the Soviet system. The ongoing challenge for the Soros foundations network is to address the shortcomings of both varieties.