On 28 April, 2025, Historians without Borders in Finland hosted a side event at the Finnish OSCE Chairpersonship event in Vienna, Resilient Together in a Changing Climate. Together with the Netherland’s Helsinki Committee and Bir Duino Kyrgyzstan, HwB advocated for the value of civil society partnerships and co-operation in OSCE environmental security initiatives.
HwB board member Bradley Reynolds opened the side session stating, “I would like to remind everyone that the Helsinki Final Act was intended to ‘create a better life for people’ or at least this is what UK Prime Minister Ted Heath said to West German Chancellor Willy Brandt during the original CSCE negotiations.
Gulnar Bayramova significantly argued in her intervention that “the Azerbaijani government’s intensified crackdown on civil society and independent media running up to COP29 and afterwards once again showed that without rule of law, human rights, and democratic institutions, “climate action” is only a phrase on a paper.”
Tolekan Ismaela highlighted the impacts of climate change on gender, underlining UN reports and stating that “for decades, feminist organizations and women’s movements have pointed out that climate change exacerbates violence against women and girls, a human rights violation that already affects at least one in three women and girls globally.”
A recent UNDP and University of Oxford report highlighted that 86% of people worldwide think states should cooperate to address climate change despite other conflicts. 80% of people worldwide think their states should do more to address climate change.
The session also highlighted Bir Duino Kyrgyzstan’s work with local communities to improve state/society responses to natural disasters.
Concept Note of the session:
Read the full Concept Note of the session Helsinki+50 from below? Building bottom-up approaches for climate resilience, hosted by Historians without Borders.
Bradley Reynolds' introductory remarks
Bradley Reynolds, Senior Researcher at the University of Turku and Board Member of Historians without Borders in Finland (HWB), spoke on the value of transnational networks of civil society actors in promoting the “Spirit of Helsinki”. As one example of this, he presented the HWB project, OSCE by All.
Gulnar Bayramova's presentation
Gulnar Bayramova, Programme Officer and Quality Manager at the Netherlands Helsinki Committee, reminded us that the understanding of comprehensive security the OSCE was founded on is now threatened by a very narrow, security-only lens which also undermines civic space East and West of Vienna.
Tolekan Ismailova's presentation
Tolekan Ismailova, Founder of Bir Duino Kyrgyzstan, Executive Secretary of the Kyrgyzstan NGO Forum and Founding President of Kyrgyzstan’s Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society, highlighted the impacts of climate change on gender and presented six interconnected drivers of risk identified by local community leaders together with researches and GNDR experts in Central Asia.
