Side Event during the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting 2018

Cur­rent sit­u­a­tion of civ­il and polit­i­cal rights in Belarus: 

First-hand infor­ma­tion from inside

Wednes­day, 12th Sep­tem­ber 2018
13:15–14:45
War­saw, Sof­i­tel-Vic­to­ria Hotel (Krolews­ka str.11)
Meet­ing Room 2
Work­ing lan­guages: Eng­lish, Russ­ian

In Octo­ber 2018, at its 124^th ses­sion, the UN Human Rights Com­mit­tee will exam­ine peri­od­ic report sub­mit­ted by Belarus on imple­men­ta­tion of the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights. This became pos­si­ble due to the fact that the Gov­ern­ment of Belarus for the first time in 20 years has ful­filled its oblig­a­tion under the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant to sub­mit its nation­al report and has liq­ui­dat­ed the mul­ti-year arrears in the pro­vi­sion of report. In the run-up to this event, Belaru­sian human rights NGOs pre­pared their own alter­na­tive report which will be pre­sent­ed to the inter­na­tion­al pub­lic at a side event at HDIM 2018.

Dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Assem­bly of Pro-Demo­c­ra­t­ic NGOs, the Human Rights Cen­ter Vias­na, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists and the Legal Trans­for­ma­tion Cen­ter (Lawtrend) will assess the lat­est leg­isla­tive changes relat­ing to free­dom of the media, free­dom of assem­bly, cur­rent sit­u­a­tion with exe­cu­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ments in Belarus, as well as the forth­com­ing eas­ing of lia­bil­i­ty for act­ing on of unreg­is­tered orga­ni­za­tions. They will also air the nation­al civ­il society’s vision of how human rights are impact­ed by «Inter-agency Plan for Imple­ment­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions addressed to the Repub­lic of Belarus with­in the frame­work of the UN Mech­a­nisms” which has been imple­ment­ed by the Gov­ern­ment of Belarus since Novem­ber 2016. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists will tell about the recent attacks, in August this year, on inde­pen­dent media in Belarus in the form of new crim­i­nal cas­es against jour­nal­ists and edi­tors of a num­ber of inde­pen­dent news por­tals and the pri­vate news agency, as well as in the form of indis­crim­i­nate search­es and con­fis­ca­tion of pro­fes­sion­al equip­ment.

Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion for Human Rights (FIDH) will shed light on the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion of lawyers in Belarus. In June 2018, the Obser­va­to­ry for the Pro­tec­tion of Human Rights Defend­ers, an FIDH-OMCT part­ner­ship, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Paris Bar and Human Rights Cen­tre “Vias­na”, pub­lished a report doc­u­ment­ing restric­tions on the inde­pen­dence of lawyers in Belarus. Based on an inves­ti­ga­tion con­duct­ed in Jan­u­ary 2018, the report crit­i­cis­es the Belaru­sian leg­is­la­tion that allows the exec­u­tive pow­er to con­trol the pro­fes­sion of lawyers. 

Next day, Sep­tem­ber 13, a dis­cus­sion on the Belaru­sian prob­lems in the fields of HDIM will be con­tin­ued with­in the frame­work at the round table Belarus – repres­sions behind the «lib­er­al­iza­tion» façade, pre­pared by the Belaru­sian House in War­saw: Sof­i­tel-Vic­to­ria Hotel (Krolews­ka str.11), Opera Hall,  13:15–14:45

The Human Dimen­sion Imple­men­ta­tion Meet­ing (HDIM) of OSCE par­tic­i­pat­ing States is Europe’s largest annu­al human rights and democ­ra­cy con­fer­ence. It is orga­nized every year by the OSCE Office for Demo­c­ra­t­ic Insti­tu­tions and Human Rights (ODIHR) as a plat­form for the 57 OSCE par­tic­i­pat­ing States, the OSCE Part­ners for Co-oper­a­tion, OSCE struc­tures, civ­il soci­ety, inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions and oth­er rel­e­vant actors to take stock of the imple­men­ta­tion of OSCE human dimen­sion com­mit­ments, dis­cuss asso­ci­at­ed chal­lenges, share good prac­tices and make rec­om­men­da­tions for fur­ther improve­ment.  2018 HDIM  will take place in War­saw from 10 to 21 Sep­tem­ber 2018.