Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2012] INTERNATIONAL LAW AND ANTISEMITISM 55
be borne out that the 2004 conference and resolution mark the dawn of a
truly new era at the UN.
EUROPE
The Council of Europe (COE), founded in 1949, was a pioneer in
promulgating the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental
Freedoms (ECHR) the following year and nine years later in establishing
the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to enforce it; by the many
deterrent, penal, and educational measures it has taken or urged, COE preceded
and established the pattern for the UN system of human rights. In the
early 1990s, renewed concern with antisemitism in Europe generated considerable
progress by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in
Europe (CSCE), the COE, and the European Union (EU). CSCE’s 1990
Copenhagen conference issued the first international instrument since 1945
concerned with antisemitism, positing that its member states “clearly and
unequivocally condemn totalitarianism, racial and ethnic hatred, anti-Semitism,
xenophobia and discrimination against anyone as well as persecution
on religious and ideological grounds,” and member states pledged themselves
to combat these phenomena by various steps, including laws to protect
individuals and groups against “incitement to violence.” 41 In the same
year, CSCE made similar commitments in its Charter of Paris for a New
Europe “to combat all forms of racial and ethnic hatred, anti-Semitism, xenophobia,
and discrimination against anyone, as well as persecution on religious
and ideological grounds.” 42 (In 1993, the “Paris Principles” were
adopted by the UN in its endeavors to define the powers, composition, and
modus operandi appropriate for human rights organizations.) While these
actions lack the force of law, they have the capacity to influence national
human rights laws and have been aptly characterized as “deliberately normcreating.”
43 CSCE’s Experts on National Minorities followed up, urging
adoption of laws by member states to prohibit incitement of violence
founded on “national, racial, ethnic or religious discrimination, hostility, or
hatred, including antisemitism.” These sentiments were reiterated (with reference
to the crisis in the former Yugoslavia) by CSCE’s Council in Rome
in 1993 in the Declaration on Aggressive Nationalism, Racism, Chauvinism,
Xenophobia, and Antisemitism. For its part and for the first time in its
41. Natan Lerner, Group Rights and Discrimination in International Law, 2nd
ed. (London: Martinus Nijhoff, 2003), 130.
42. Natan Lerner, “Incitement in the Racial Convention: Reach and Shortcomings
of Article 4,” Israel Yearbook on Human Rights, 22 (1992): 3.
43. Malvina Halberstam, “Comment: The Copenhagen Document: Intervention
in Support of Democracy,” Harvard International Law Journal, 34 (1993): 163-75.