Statement by Iryna Velichka at the side event of the 53rd session of the UNHRC on the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Side-event “75th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: the Importance of Honoring International Obligations by States”

Iryna Velichka, Head of Department of Multilateral Cooperation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus

I am privileged to intervene as one of the keynote speakers at this important event on a very topical issue in the run up to the celebration of the 75th anniversary of crucial and so much needed to the human beings document — Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

The Declaration was the first universal international legal, though not binding, act that proclaimed the fundamental human rights and freedoms. Despite the divergent positions, the international community managed to adopt this crucial document, which later gave impetus to the International Bill of Human Rights, becoming part of it.

This document remains very topical today. And what we need today is to strictly follow its provisions. No one has an exclusive license to interpret international human rights documents, including UDHR, in accordance with their own interests.

The Vienna Declaration and Program of Action, which also celebrates its 30th Anniversary this year, confirmed the conviction that human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated, and boldly rejected the view that certain human rights could be considered optional.

No one argues the importance of human rights.

However, human rights are not the prerogative of a certain group of countries and are not immune from their non-observance under the pretext of endowing themselves with the status of a developed democracy.

Unfortunately, it is exactly such a consumerist approach and interpretation of the international concept of human rights with accordance to their own interests, that the West demonstrates pertaining to the topic of human rights, imposing economic sanctions and even unleashing hybrid wars against those countries that, in the opinion of the Western countries, fall short of their democratic ideals.

Here comes a logical question: “Who are the judges?”.

Ensuring human rights is, first and foremost, an internal affair of every state, as it constitutes an important part of the daily work of all organs of the state machinery. And the Western countries are no exception.

In this regard I would like to draw your attention to the report titled “The Most Resonant Human Rights Violations in Certain Countries of the world” issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus.

The report will be posted on the web-site of the Ministry.

The information contained in the report is based, in addition to media reports, on information from the universal periodic reviews of the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC), conclusions of the special procedures of the HRC and international human rights bodies and reports of regional and national NGOs.

It cites the most resonant cases of human rights violation in 23 states of the so-called Collective West.

The report, as in previous years, is not intended to provide an analytical snapshot of the ongoing processes and does not claim to be an exhaustive presentation of the numerous violations taking place in the Western countries.

The purpose of the report is just to remind that the Western countries ignore the domestic situation on human rights, which is worsening.

The report demonstrates a common set of problems, typical for all Western countries: systemic discrimination in society, almost daily dispersals of peaceful protesters advocating the need to improve socio-economic rights, violations of the rights of refugees and migrants, blocking access to media that broadcast an alternative governmental point of view.

The West undertakes its efforts to legalize the criminal prosecution of dissidents. Beatings and intimidation of journalists also continue, and numerous murders on racial, cultural, religious and linguistic grounds are not investigated.

Article 3 of UDHR states that everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person and article 13 states that everyone has the right to freedom of movement. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to seek a safe place to live. If threatened or treated unfairly, everyone has the right to enjoy in other countries asylum.

How does the West operationalize these principles?

The West today has created many hotbeds of conflict in the world, from which people, for quite natural reasons, try to escape. However, the Western countries, which have always demonstrated their commitment to protecting refugees and migrants, in reality they remain countries with tightly closed doors and high fences for these vulnerable groups. Today, hundreds of thousands of such deprived people die in the Mediterranean because of the unwillingness of certain EU countries to provide them with asylum. Pushbacks of migrants to neighbouring countries are the favorite activities of some states, in particular, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Lithuania.

For instance, the Human Rights Watch in its annual rights report 2023, notes that Bulgaria, along with other EU member states, continues to engage in unlawful pushbacks and violence at its borders against asylum seekers and migrants. Greece welcomed tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees but failed to protect the rights of asylum seekers and migrants from other states, by pushing them back to Turkiye.

In Poland, according “Wyborcza Bialystok” internet-media, on August 13, 2022, human rights organization “Border Emergency Collective” (in cooperation with the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, the Polish Hospitality Foundation, the Multicultural Society Integration Association NOMADA and “Grupa Granica”) prepared and published a video report “Zone of hidden violence” on human rights violations at the Belarusian-Polish border. The report says that since autumn 2021, about 4.000 confirmed illegal push-backs and human rights abuses by Polish border and other services (including examples of violence against migrant women) have been recorded.

You may see from the report that the number of manifestations with socio-economic demands due to increasing inflation, soaring prices decrease in purchasing power as well as increase in the workload in certain sectors in the Western countries is growing.

For example, in April 2023, the Belgian consumer protection organization Test Aankoop called for a price freeze on 100 basic foodstuffs for three months. But the Belgian authorities did not rush to support this initiative. At the same time, the Belgian government announced plans to increase the defense budget to 1.57 % of GDP by 2030 (75% more than five years ago) and to 2% by 2035.

In November 2022, thousands of people joined a demonstration in London, calling for general elections amid the worsening cost-of-living crisis in the United Kingdom.

According to Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia, significant part of the Latvian population (22.5%) lives near the poverty line. The purchasing power and real disposable income of the population decreased in 2022, inflation (17.3%) was the highest over the past 25 years.

If you follow the cases in the report, you will see that hill breach of Articles 18, 19, 20 regarding the right to freedom of thought, right to freedom of opinion and expression and to seek, receive and impart information and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

In connection with the holding of electoral parliamentary campaign in Latvia, the efforts of the ruling parties in 2022 were focused on establishing control over all the significant political opponents, depriving them of sources of income and access to the media space. The most prominent critics of the current government (politicians, journalists who form public opinion) were subjected to criminal prosecution, some of them left the country on the eve or immediately after the parliamentary elections.

According to information posted on the Polish ombudsman's official website, in 2022 in Poland there was an increasing number of complaints from Polish citizens about the increased blocking of websites in the Polish segment of the Internet, which poses direct risks to freedom of expression and access to information.

It’s worthwhile mentioning that today is a very important and symbolic date June 22 is the day of the beginning of the most brutal and destructive war unleashed by Nazi Germany against the Soviet people. It became the Great Patriotic War for the countries of the former USSR.

That war ended in victory for the sake of humanity, humanism and justice and created the prerequisites to the emergence of such milestone document as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It’s so sad that a number of countries, that have been granted freedom from slavery, try to rewrite the historical truth. The fight against monuments to Soviet soldiers and attempts to sink the blessed memory and heroic past of their people into oblivion, come to the point of absurdity in Estonia, Latia, Lithuania, which were part of the Soviet Union quite recently. You may find a lot of case on this regard in the report.

Belarus has never sought confrontation on human rights and does not seek it in the context of this report. We just want the Western countries to realize that the imposing democracies tailored to their patterns and one-sided interpretations of international human rights provisions are destructive for international relations and make sustainable development to be at stake.

In this regard, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus Sergei Aleinik in his foreword to the report stated that mutual respectful dialogue and consideration of the national peculiarities of the development of each particular country must be decisive in inter-State relations, including on human rights.

Addressing at least the challenges identified in this report will be a pledge of respect, a basis for trust and cooperation in the common interest for the encouragement and promotion of human rights around the world, as well as a tangible contribution to the observance of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which should not be misinterpreted.

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