2016 Trafficking in Persons Report: State-sponsored forced labor in Belarus still area of concern

Although the Belarusian authorities continued to be a leader in multilateral efforts to combat trafficking and tried to protect victims, the country’s government is still engaged in practices that condone forced labor, and made no efforts to reform its policies, the 2016 Trafficking in Persons Report by the U.S. Department of State says.

“The UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution in July 2015 expressing deep concern at the government’s ‘violations of labour rights amounting to forced labour’, among other human rights issues. <…> The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights took the position that an earlier presidential decree, issued in December 2012, ‘effectively takes away the right of workers in the wood-processing industry to freely leave their jobs’. That decree assigns monthly bonuses to employees in the wood-processing industry that they must pay back if they resign; failure to repay these ‘bonuses’ risks a court order obligating the employee to continue to work in that industry under law enforcement supervision,” the report says.

According to the document, the Belarusian government continued the practice of subbotniks, which requires employees of the government, state enterprises, and many private businesses to work on occasional Saturdays and donate their earnings to finance government projects. The UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus reported repercussions for non-participation in subbotniks, including non-renewal of employment contracts and the revocation of monthly bonuses. State employers and authorities also intimidated and fined some workers who refused to participate. Authorities require university and high school students to help farmers during the harvesting season without paying them for their labors, in addition to other forced community service projects. Authorities reportedly forced military conscripts to perform work unrelated to military service.

In fact, in 2015, the government introduced a new penalty on unemployed citizens that requires payment of a fee to the state to avoid compulsory community service. Other policies effectively creating state-sponsored forced labor continued, affecting civil servants, workers in the wood processing industry, students, and citizens suffering from drug or alcohol dependency, among others, the 2016 Trafficking in Persons Report reads.

The U.S. Department of State recommends Belarus, among other things, to reform state policies to end all forms of state-sponsored forced labor, including by repealing presidential decrees and other laws that result in the unemployed, civil servants, wood processing workers, students, and citizens suffering from drug or alcohol dependency, among others being subjected to forced labor; significantly increase efforts to investigate and prosecute cases of forced labor and sex trafficking.

“Wherever we find poverty and lack of opportunity—wherever the rule of law is weak, where corruption is most ingrained, where minorities are abused, and where populations can’t count on the protection of government—we find not just vulnerability to trafficking, but zones of impunity where traffickers can prey on their victims,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in the introduction to the report.

Belsat.eu