Iryna Dzeshavitsyna: Haraszti's report enables us to reason our position with facts

The report on the situation with human rights in Belarus, drawn up by Miklos Haraszti, enables Belarusan human rights fighters to rely on the conclusions of the independent international expert.

This was reported to the EuroBelarus Information Service by Iryna Dzeshavitsyna, the leader of the International group of the Legal Transformation Centre “Lawtrend”.

Let us recall that on June 4 Miklos Haraszti, the  UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Belarus, presented his report at the 23rd regular session of the UN Human Rights Council. During the dialog Mikhail Chvastou, the official representative of Belarus to the UN in Geneva, presented the report as “a mechanism of the EU foreign politics”.

“One of the main arguments Belarus has against the mandate of the Special Rapporteur is the assertion that the mechanism itself is unconstructive and doesn’t promote real dialog with the state about the human rights. And such mechanism as the universal periodic review (UPR) Belarus presents as the best within the UN system”, - Iryna Dzeshavitsyna recalled.

She noted that UPR is the unique mechanism designed to analyse the situation with the human rights that all countries go through independently of any indicators. Still, one shouldn’t forget that this mechanism is new and not all pitfalls are detected yet.

“Unfortunately, some states find their ways to reject uncomfortable questions by creating dangerous precedents, - told Iryna Dzeshavitsyna. – And these dangerous precedents add to the fact that UPR enables the state to refuse fulfilling any of the pronounced recommendations. Too loose recommendations also present danger as they can be interpreted differently”.

On the quality of Haraszti's report

When speaking about the Haraszti's report, the expert believes it “describes the situation with the human rights in Belarus in full: both negative and positive tendencies and events, the situation with political, civil, economic and social rights “.

“It makes a lot of references to the documents, decisions, conclusions of the UN, OSCE and other international organizations, thus providing all-embracing information about the human rights situation in Belarus, providing Belarusan human rights fighters with a chance to reason their opinion with facts and rely on the conclusions of the independent international expert”, -highlighted the leader of the International group of the Legal Transformation Centre “Lawtrend”.

UN Council as the area for NGO

The fact that Valiantsin Stefanovich, Belarusan human rights fighter, has his word during the dialog with the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights is of great importance, too: “It is such international platforms as the UN which are those rare places where the representative of the human rights community in Belarus can say right to the face of the Belarusan authorities that Ales Bialiatski, Mikola Statkevich, Zmicier Dashkevich and other political prisoners are under unlawful detention, backing their words with the decisions made by the UN Human Rights Council and urging the authorities to abandon death penalty and criminalization of NGOs’ activity in Belarus. The words of the human rights fighter who represents Belarus have great impact on those who is responsible for decision-making in the Council”, - mentioned Iryna Dzeshavitsyna.

The expert also put special emphasis on the proposal of the international NGO “Civicus”, which states that the mandate of the Special Rapporteur can be used for deep analysis of the existing Belarusan legislative system and clear recommendations on how to adjust it to the international standards in the long prospective.