Statement by Maxim Ryzhenkov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus, at the High-Level Segment of the 58th session of the UN Human Rights Council (24 February 2025, Geneva)

Distinguished Mr. Chairperson,
Dear Colleagues,

I start my remarks in a very unusual way for a representative of a country that has been labelled as a “human rights troublemaker” a million times.
Today, Latvia has tried to teach us how to live right. Latvia, the country that has lost more than 30 per cent of its population in 30 years of “rule of law and democracy"! The country whose citizens in thousands are queuing at the border to get to Belarus for cheap and quality goods or health services.

Therefore, I will try to explain very clearly all the absurdity of any accusations against Belarus.

The country should become safer, stronger and more prosperous year after year. This is an axiom.

Tell me, if a country's citizens live under a peaceful sky, feel completely safe, and do not fear being shot with a machine gun, stabbed or hit by a truck driven by a fanatic.   If they are not afraid for their children’s lives when they go to school or play outside.   If they have a job and sufficient salary not to cut down expenses on food, clean water, home heating and electricity. They consume good quality organic food. They are politically competent and active. Add to this free preschool, secondary and higher education and healthcare services.

Can there be fundamental human rights problems in such a country, as most of us understand them? Because all of the above are basic human rights, among which the main is the right to life.    That is all — the modern Belarus, which we Belarusians know, those who have visited Belarus know, and I hope that those of you who want to visit Belarus will be able to see it with your own eyes.

Of course, we are not perfect. But everything I said about us is true. According to the Sustainable Development Goals Report, Belarus has already achieved four Goals: poverty eradication, clean water and sanitation, reducing inequality and preserving terrestrial ecosystems.

Why are people all over the world taking to the streets today? We see it on BBC, CNN, these channels broadcasted in Belarus without obstacles. My answer is: because people face serious problems. The so-called collective West is gripped by civil disobedience, we see it all. The protesters in most cases are interested in neither media rights nor any political rights. Peace and security, labour and wages, pensions and social guarantees — these are the main triggers that bring millions of protesters to the streets today in the so-called Old World.  By the way, these are the millions of people who have long been frustrated with not being able to solve their problems through elections, and we see it in the number of participants, or through their governments.

In principle, can we consider the situation with political freedoms and media rights in the Old World to be exemplary, precisely exemplary? I agree with the recent widely circulated thesis that the real threat to democracy is Europe itself, which violates all basic human values. This has been already understood in the White House as well.

Most of us, as I have seen from the statements before me, realize that human rights issues are moving in the wrong direction, increasingly becoming controversial and divisive. We will soon forget the civilization path of development of these very rights.

Look how the “free world” is rapidly shifting its legal priorities to suit political conjectures. Yesterday in women’s sports we gave medals to transgenders. And today, it is already considering as violation of women’s rights again.
We are again defending women from the extremism of gender ideology and restoring biological truth. It is not my words, that is what they say in the democratic world.

One more point. «Free Europe» shuts down the Belarusian and Russian media. Blocked practically all of them. Is it possible that our few channels of “propaganda”, as they call it there, harm the large-scale Western information ideological machine? Come on! Even this right of citizens to get access to a tiny alternative opinion has been destroyed today!

Another example of cynicism. The EU prohibits directly or indirectly the right to travel across the border of Belarus with the EU not only for its own citizens, but also for citizens of Belarus and Russia.

I am not talking about all the members of the EU, but Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.   We know what they fear is the truth. The truth that their citizens bring home from their trips to our countries. Paradox! But 40 years ago, the West imposed sanctions on the USSR for restricting the rights of Soviet citizens to travel abroad so that they did not bring home, as we said then, “the capitalist truth”.

The topic of refugees has always been a “sacred issue” of human rights. And today «The Times» reports that the EU is drawing up a plan to overhaul the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees in order to limit their rights. I do not even touch upon climate agenda and related human rights issues.

How we, such undemocratic, — as you in the West imagine — can catch up with such “swings”? But you can’t handle this yourselves!

We are all tired of the so-called «advanced democracies» doing what benefits them, while they themselves sin, violating human rights. Belarus has repeatedly warned about the inadmissibility of such «vacillation» and the invention of dubious human rights concepts.

When the West finally realizes that human rights are a platform for dialogue and cooperation, not confrontation? That there is no universal model for the realization of human rights.

We are ready to support the UN leadership in initiatives aimed at sustainability and justice in international relations. But if some countries do not stop manipulating human rights issues, we will not solve anything.

Belarus calls for a global reset in human rights in order to mitigate the conflict potential of human rights agenda, to respect the diversity of political systems, development paths and cultural traditions and to establish a clear ban on any hierarchy and double standards in the field of human rights.  

Thank you for your attention.

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