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Fifty years ago today, 35 world leaders from the Soviet East, North America and Europe met to sign a landmark document. The Helsinki Accords, as they became known, committed their signatories to respect for sovereignty, non-aggression and human rights. As Pope Leo pithily noted on Wednesday, ‘from Vancouver to Vladivostok’ the Accords forged a commitment between ideologically divided nations to pursue dialogue and cooperation over force and isolation.

Looking at the week’s news, we could rightly wonder at Helsinki’s legacy. We are in an era of the politics of force. The East is at war with itself, the West wrangles over trade and security, a man-made humanitarian emergency unfolds in Gaza, and flows of refugees bring the ill tidings that all is not well with the world of nation-states.

But the Accord arguably does have a legacy. Peacebuilding and reunification in Ireland and Germany are part of this. And, ironically, perhaps its greatest legacy lies in the political and religious dissidents who took courage from its signing and tried to hold their Cold War leaders to its letter. Nicknamed ‘the Helsinki effect’, movements like Polish Solidarity and the Czech Charter 77 drew life, courage and a platform from its commitments.

The Vatican sent its own envoy, Agostino Casaroli, to the negotiations. Casaroli argued that there would be no peace or real security for any country without a strong internal defence of freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, and freedom of religion. Without these, other human rights would be meaningless. Freedom of belief was the first, not the last, human right.

In a week when nature has reminded us that from the shores of Russia to the coast of Japan, when the land quakes, we are utterly interconnected, we surely need to protect something of the spirit of Helsinki. Even where ideological divisions exist, dialogue is possible, indeed essential. But a broad commitment to dialogue means little without the internal commitments made by each nation to protect the basic freedoms of thought, conscience and religion that provide the moral visions that we bring to such dialogue and cooperation. Helsinki defends thinking and believing in itself, and it defends these as an integral part of how we live peacefully in a world of difference. Would that our leaders protect this, and more realistically, courage to our own age of dissidents who necessarily defend it.

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