UN rights council extends mandate of special rapporteur on Belarus

April 4, Pozirk. The UN Human Rights Council has adopted a resolution on human rights in Belarus at its 55^th session in Geneva.

The resolution received 24 “Yes” votes, six “No” votes and 17 abstentions.

Among other things, the council has extended the mandate of the special rapporteur on the situation in Belarus “for another period of one year effective from the end of its fifty-sixth session” (i.e. until July 12, 2025) and asked her “to continue to monitor developments and to make recommendations on ways to strengthen respect, protection and fulfilment of human rights in Belarus, to hold consultations with all stakeholders, including civil society inside and outside Belarus.”

The mandate of the special rapporteur on human rights in Belarus was established in 2012 and has been renewed annually. Anaïs Marin, from France, has been serving in this capacity since November 2018.

The independent researcher will present a report on human rights in Belarus at the 59^th session of the UNHRC (summer 2025) and the 80^th session of the General Assembly.

The UNHRC has also formed a group of three independent experts on human rights in Belarus. Its mandate will include investigating and establishing the facts, circumstances and root causes of all the alleged human rights violations in the country since May 1, 2020.

The group will “collect, consolidate, preserve and analyze evidence of such violations and abuses,” “identify those responsible in view of relevant judicial and other proceedings, including criminal proceedings in courts and tribunals that have competent jurisdiction” and “make recommendations, in particular on accountability measures, all with a view to ending impunity.”

The council has condemned “widespread and systematic violations of human rights,” including “arbitrary deprivation of the right to life and to liberty, with mass unlawful detentions and arrests of individuals on politically motivated grounds or for exercising their human rights, enforced disappearance, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, including sexual- and gender-based violence, denial of due process and the right to a fair trial, failure to safeguard the rights and the best interests of the child, violations of the right to education and work, arbitrary denial of the right to enter one’s own country, violations of the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association and to equal protection of the law, as well as other violations of human rights.”

The UNHRC has called on the Belarusian authorities to “immediately and unconditionally” release and rehabilitate political prisoners, stop violence against peaceful demonstrators, as well as torture and “forced exile of individuals solely for exercising their human rights, and to ensure equal protection of and by the law.”

It has also called on Belarus to “stop the misuse of ‘counter-terrorism’ and ‘counter-extremism’ policies” to prosecute civil society and people “engaged in non-violent expression and advocacy of dissident opinion.”

Also read: Belarusian authorities abusing anti-terrorism laws – UN special rapporteur