Chapter 3 examines how the SED leadership used “socialist human rights” in international relations. Seeking to break its diplomatic isolation outside of the socialist bloc, the SED decided to use the UN International Year for Human Rights in 1968 to launch a propaganda campaign aimed at the Third World to demonstrate East German solidarity against Western imperialism. Although this effort failed, the bureaucratic machinations surrounding the campaign cemented for SED officials that socialism and human rights were one and the same and that the GDR was on the right side of this global struggle. This paved the way for a series of treaties and agreements, including recognition from West Germany and entry into the United Nations, that included public commitments to international rights treaties and culminated in the GDR’s signing of the Helsinki Accords in 1975, which finally led to universal diplomatic recognition of East German sovereignty.