Common position of Belarusian human rights defenders ahead of the next round of the EU-Belarus human rights dialogue

We stress the absence of any sig­nif­i­cant progress and sys­temic changes in the field of human rights and free­doms in Belarus.

The coun­try still:

• retains the death penal­ty;
• ignores key rec­om­men­da­tions of inter­na­tion­al bod­ies to strength­en the judi­cial sys­tem;
• con­sid­er­ably restricts civ­il, polit­i­cal and socio-eco­nom­ic rights, includ­ing free­dom of asso­ci­a­tion, free­dom of expres­sion, and free­dom of assem­bly;
• demon­strates evi­dence of per­se­cu­tion of human rights defend­ers and jour­nal­ists for their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties.

Seri­ous improve­ment is only pos­si­ble through sys­temic changes in the field of human rights and free­doms, and through build­ing a val­ue-based dia­logue between Belarus and its inter­na­tion­al part­ners, as well as – most sig­nif­i­cant­ly – with­in the coun­try.

The Belaru­sian human rights com­mu­ni­ty should be a par­ty to the EU-Belarus human rights dia­logue and be involved in this process.

Belaru­sian human rights orga­ni­za­tions should also be involved in oth­er dia­logues with­in the coun­try. In this regard, we urge the gov­ern­ment to estab­lish a dia­logue on human rights between gov­ern­ment bod­ies and human rights orga­ni­za­tions and to devel­op in coor­di­na­tion with them a Nation­al Human Rights Plan. The Plan can be based on rec­om­men­da­tions received by Belarus as part of the Uni­ver­sal Peri­od­ic Review. Human rights orga­ni­za­tions have joint­ly devel­oped a set of indi­ca­tors on the imple­men­ta­tion of these rec­om­men­da­tions, which will allow to assess the changes in the human rights sit­u­a­tion in Belarus.

We also call on the gov­ern­ment to strict­ly com­ply with the inter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments vol­un­tar­i­ly assumed by the coun­try under UN, OSCE and oth­er inter­na­tion­al treaties and mech­a­nisms, and to take mea­sures to imple­ment the con­clu­sions by the bod­ies estab­lished with­in the treaties, in par­tic­u­lar the Unit­ed Nations Human Rights Com­mit­tee.

Office of the Rights of Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties

Cen­ter for Legal Trans­for­ma­tion

Belaru­sian Doc­u­men­ta­tion Cen­ter

Barys Zvozskau Belaru­sian Human Rights House

Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists

Human Rights Cen­ter «Vias­na»

Legal Ini­tia­tive

Belaru­sian Helsin­ki Com­mit­tee

FORB Ini­tia­tive