Valyantsin Rybakou, Permanent Representative of Belarus to the United Nations, made the statement at the plenary meeting of the 74th session of the UN General Assembly on the Report of the UNHRC on November, 1.
Among other things, he blasted the activities of the Human Rights Council for ‘politicization and double standards; bias assessment of the human rights situations in different countries; overloaded discussions with a country-specific subjects’, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry reports.
According to Valyantsin Rybakou, the Council is becoming a repressive body and works against of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development. The Belarusian diplomat stressed that the strengthening of the HRC should not be considered by giving this body additional functions of ‘refereeing’.
In addition, Rybakou spoke against using country-specific mandates.
On 28 June 2012, the Human Rights Council established the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus. The mandate has since then been renewed each year. From 1 November 2012 to 31 October 2018, Mr. Miklos Haraszti (Hungary) had been Special Rapporteur. In November 2018, French political scientist Anais Marin, an expert on international relations and, in particular, post-communist transformations in Central and Eastern Europe assumed the functions.
