AHC: Brainstorming "A Helsinki Final Act" for Human Rights that Kickstarts Colonial Reform.

The 1975 Helsinki Accords marked a recognition of the territorial status quo in Europe, and more importantly a major step forward in international law.

The final act was nonbinding, but its statements about support for civil liberties and fundamental freedoms galvanized dissident grounds in the Warsaw Pact, and lead to the founding of Human Rights Watch. The dissident movements of the late 80s cited the agreement signed about 15 years earlier, so I was thinking a major treaty signed in the '40s or '50s could lead to a movement for major internal reforms in the colonial territories a decade later.

Could a similar international convention between the major powers on human rights eventually spill over into colonized areas? I was thinking about the fate of colonial empires in a world without WW2. The 1926 Anti-Slavery Convention mandated the abolition of slavery in signatories' territories, so another treaty that bans forced labor in colonies may be feasible.

Would an agreement signed by France, Belgium, or Portugal, for example, provide human rights standard for colonial subjects to demand legal equality with citizens of the metropole? The Weimar World TL mentions several unions like this evolving from the Spanish, Portuguese, and French Empires, but doesn't go into the details.

In that TL France evolves into a French Union, where each colony gains equivalent representation to a region of the metropole, similiar to OTL 2018's French Guiana.

Alternatively, a territory could choose a looser, home rule system where a colony doesn't have seats in the metropoles's parliament, but gains a separate parliament with control over its domestic policy. where a province gains the control over all domestic policy. France seems likely to pursue a more centralized union, whereas an empire like Portugal with less contiguous territories could opt for 5-6 cantons (European Portugal, Cabinda, East Timor, etc.) that are part of a loose confederation.
 
Here, from 1940, is a relic of a somewhat belated attempt to develop this sort of sensibility in the French Empire.

Trois colours, un drapeau, une empire.jpg
 
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