British Helsinki Human Rights Group

The British Helsinki Human Rights Group is an Oxford-based non-governmental organization which monitors human rights in the 56 participating States of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Despite its name, the organisation is not affiliated to the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights. BHHRG has been critical of what it characterizes as Western interference in imposing democracy, and has supported the right of political independence from the west of a number of Communist and post-Communist regimes, as well as of a number of African dictators.

The group also uses the name OSCEwatch, indicating that it sees part of its mission as scrutinising the activities of the OSCE. The OSCEwatch and BHHRG websites are identical, and both websites openly refer to each other.

The BHHRG was founded in 1992. It is run from the Oxford home of historian Professor Norman Stone, who has on occasion taken part in BHHRG activities, and was co-founded by his wife Christine Stone and fellow Oxford historian Mark Almond (who is also its chairman). Its trustees comprise Mark Almond, Anthony Daniels (who writes for the Daily Telegraph under the pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple), John Laughland, Christine Stone and Mary Walsh. Almond, Daniels, Laughland and Stone are members of Britain's conservative intelligentsia and are regular contributors to British newspapers. Chad Nagle, an American lawyer who frequently contributes to the libertarian isolationist antiwar.com website, is also associated with the group. Noel Malcolm, a historian of early modern Britain and Europe who in the 1990s and early 2000s wrote a couple of mass market books on some aspects of Balkan history, appeared on a 1994 list of founders and spoke on its behalf in 1999 but has apparently since left the group.

The BHHRG is not an "official" Helsinki Committee, as it is not affiliated with the Helsinki Committees' umbrella organisation, the International Helsinki Federation (IHF). The United Kingdom's representative in the IHF is the British Helsinki Subcommittee of the Parliamentary Human Rights Group, established in 1976. This led to the BHHRG being mistakenly labelled the British Helsinki Committee, which prompted the British Helsinki Subcommittee to ask visitors to its website to

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