Belarus takes part in the meeting with the UN Special Rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures

On September 6, 2021 in Geneva, Belarus took part in the meeting of the Group of Like-Minded Countries with the Special Rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Council on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights.

The Permanent Representative Yury Ambrazevich expressed strong support for the activities of the Special Rapporteur in publicly defending the illegality of unilateral sanctions, their inhumanity and detrimental effect on the realization of human rights and interests of, first of all, ordinary citizens of the affected states.

The Belarusian diplomat noted that the work of the Special Rapporteur is especially actual now, when there is a tendency of widely use of unilateral sanctions by Western countries against a growing number of sovereign states in order to exert political and economic pressure on them. It is well known, that the West uses sanctions as a tool to promote its own geopolitical interests under the far-fetched pretext of protecting human rights.

Representatives of China, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela confirmed the thesis that unilateral sanctions do not comply with international law, and gave examples of their destructive impact on the social sphere, in particular on public health in certain countries.

The participants discussed possible joint steps to further consolidate international efforts to universally condemn unilateral Western sanctions both at the UN and other international organizations, to recognize the practice as illegal and to put an end to it altogether.

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