The Help and Action newsletter was launched in 1977. It was published by the same organisation Help and Action, founded in Paris in 1974, dealing with the protection of human rights and civil liberties in the Soviet Union and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The Newsletter regularly published information on individual cases of human rights violations guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other internationally recognised conventions. The first issue was published on 15^th January 1977, shortly after the establishment of Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia. The rapporteur was based on the English and French versions, initially as a bimonthly, and was published quarterly from 1987 onwards.

 The Help and Action newsletter regularly reported on all types of persecution behind the Iron Curtain. They published the names of the persecuted and imprisoned opponents of the regime in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania. It spoke about protest actions organised in the West by human rights organisations to help the oppressed opponents of the regime. There were various demonstrations, campaigns and concerts to support persecuted dissidents, open letters to representatives of totalitarian regimes, but also exhibitions of forbidden samizdat books by authors and conferences on human rights issues. The aim of these actions was primarily the release of political prisoners and the administration of fair trials in the countries of Eastern Europe. The leadership of the committee and the issue of Help and Action was organized by Ivana Tigridová, the wife of Pavel Tigrid, who was one of the most prominent representatives of Czechoslovakian anti-Communist exile.