Belarus’ Foreign Ministry: UN platforms on human rights almost ‘privatised’ by West
Belarus’ Deputy Foreign Minister, Yuri Ambrazevich, has met today with a delegation of Russia’s Foreign Ministry which arrived in Minsk to hold inter-ministerial consultations on international co-operation on issues of protection and promotion of human rights – as reported by the Belarusian Foreign Ministry’s press service
Mr. Ambrazevich noted the government's commitment to development and promotion of human rights in Belarus, including in accordance with its international obligations in this area – in particular within the framework of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
At the same time, he said that interpretations of the provisions and practices of the implementation of these documents are increasingly diverging around the world, demonstrating contradictions in the concept of human rights.
“The countries of the world are rather more united in the fact that there is not a single state where human rights would be implemented as perfectly as they are written in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. The discrepancies, in the opinion of the Belarusian side, are natural, and they are explained by a significant difference in the historical ways of the evolution of society in individual states,” Mr. Ambrazevich said. “Given the lack of a co-ordinated position, attempts of some countries to impose their approaches in the field of human rights on other sovereign states as the only true ones have long been a bone of contention and confrontation, rather than a unifying agenda for co-operation.”
Unfortunately, for various reasons, the UN multilateral platforms on human rights are almost ‘privatised’ by Western countries and most often voice only superficial criticism in relation to Belarus, Russia, China and a number of other countries that fail to accept Western hegemony but defend their national interests.
“The concept of human rights, among other things, is designed to solve the problem of ensuring the protection of a person from the arbitrariness of a public group or a state. In this respect, the Belarusian Government’s work is aimed at building peaceful and open society without discrimination and violence, ensuring equal access to justice for all citizens and creating effective, accountable and broad-based public institutions," Mr. Ambrazevich stressed.
The Deputy Foreign Minister confirmed Belarus’ focus on continuous improvement of the state’s working methods so that requests and rights of each person are implemented as efficiently as possible and without prejudice to society. Mr. Ambrazevich also welcomed a regular nature of consultations between the foreign ministries of Belarus and Russia on the topic of international co-operation in the field of human rights. He expressed confidence that bilateral liaisons will make it possible to enrich national systems, and at the same time to counteract the use of the topic of human rights to demonise Belarus and Russia in the international arena.
The Deputy Foreign Minister believes the joint efforts of Belarus, Russia and other countries defending their real independence and sovereignty in the international arena will allow the concept of human rights to regain its true universal recognition and human dimension instead of the current politicisation, to return its unifying principle to multilateral international co-operation in the field of protection and promotion of human rights.
