In response to anti-Semitic violence in Western Europe and the broader OSCE region in the early 2000s, members of the U.S. Helsinki Commission pushed for OSCE participating States to recognize anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish violence as a unique region-wide phenomena, given European history, especially the Holocaust. Helsinki Commission-led efforts include annual hearings, legislation within the U.S. Congress, and resolutions adopted by the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (OSCE PA) on combating anti-Semitism.

Other OSCE initiatives supported by Helsinki Commissioners include the seminal 2004 Berlin Conference, where OSCE participating States pledged to implement the landmark "Berlin Declaration" against anti-Semitism, and the follow-on 2014 “High-Level Commemorative Event and Civil Society Forum on the 10th Anniversary of the OSCE’s Berlin Conference on Anti-Semitism.”  Commission work on these issues also helped spur the annual appointment by successive OSCE Chairs-in-Office, since 2004, of three Personal Representatives to promote tolerance, including a Personal Representative on Anti-Semitism; the creation of a Tolerance and Non-Discrimination Office, which includes a specific focus on anti-Semitism housed in OSCE’s Warsaw-based Office of Human Rights and Democratic Institutions (ODIHR); and more than thirty high-level OSCE and OSCE PA meetings and other events on anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance. 

Additionally, Commissioners have led efforts in the United States to include anti-Semitic incidents in the annual State Department International Religious Freedom Reports and Country Reports on Human Rights, and to create the position of the U.S. Special Envoy on Anti-Semitism within the State Department. Following attacks in Paris and Copenhagen in 2015 where Jewish institutions were targeted, Commissioners have supported OSCE and other European efforts to combat anti-Semitism, including legislation calling for increased security for the Jewish community, funds for civil society coalitions to combat hate, and a U.S.-EU Joint Action Plan to combat prejudice and discrimination that would include a specific focus on anti-Semitism.