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Belarus calls on UN Human Rights Council to stop targeting states on political grounds
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MINSK, 19 November (BelTA) — Belarus has always been committed to improving the human rights situation but will never agree to imposed approaches that rely on coercion and pressure, Belarus’ Permanent Mission to the UN said at a meeting of the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly in New York, where a report on the outcomes of the Human Rights Council's work this year was presented, BelTA has learned.
A representative of the Belarusian delegation noted that the UN Human Rights Council has been and remains an important platform for discussing all aspects of human rights. According to its mandate, this body should deal with genuine human rights issues that significantly impact people's quality of life and help strengthen the capacity of states in this area. “However, the Council continues to move further and further away from the principles of universality, impartiality, objectivity, and non-selectivity, sometimes engaging in the outright targeting of states on political grounds. Selective country-specific resolutions are just one element of the practice of ‘instrumentalizing human rights for political purposes’, which undermines trust in the Council and its decisions,” the Belarusian diplomat said. “We are witnessing a paradoxical situation where the Council, while allegedly fighting repression in certain countries, is itself turning into a repressive body.”
The mission emphasized that the abuse of human rights issues is on par with the issue of unilateral coercive measures that run counter to international law. “Here we face another paradox. On the one hand, the work of the Human Rights Council is actively used to justify an illegal sanctions policy aimed at widespread interference in the internal affairs of independent states. On the other hand, the Council continues to essentially ignore the negative impact of unilateral measures on human rights, which are arbitrarily imposed by a group of countries, allegedly based on the Council's decisions,” the Permanent Mission of Belarus said.
The diplomat stated that over the past year, the UN Human Rights Council has not made any effective attempts to combat politicization and double standards, imbalances in the attention given to different categories of rights, biased assessments of human rights situations, excessive focus on selective country-specific resolutions, and growing confrontation among states. “Belarus has always been aimed at improving the human rights situation. We have always been open to mutually respectful and constructive dialogue aimed at genuine progress in this area and welcome all initiatives that promote and protect economic, social, and cultural rights to reduce inequality both within and between states. However, we will never agree to approaches imposed on us through the Council that involve coercion and pressure, imply interference in internal affairs, and lead to the degradation of state sovereignty,” the representative of the Belarusian delegation summarized.
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