As we mentioned before, our Association periodically sent our submissions to UN on monitoring the impact of sanctions on human rights.
We wrote in the submissions, that sanctions against Russia are the only effective tool for influencing its economic system and political regime in modern conditions, limiting the Russia’s criminal actions against the Ukrainian people, and relevant violations of human rights by the aggressor, including the situation in occupied Crimea.
We stress in our submissions, that the main form of assessing the effectiveness of sanctions should take into account the level of violation of international law by the state, that has become the object of the sanctions policy, before and after the introduction or change of the relevant sanctions.
Also we wrote about controvercial Report A/HRC/57/55 from Special Rapporteur from Belarus Alena Douhan “Monitoring and assessment of the impact of unilateral sanctions and overcompliance on human rights”, published on UN resources.
As we wrote already, the strategy of ignoring the activities of the UN Special Rapporteur from Belarus is fundamentally wrong and it should be replaced by a mass submissions to the UN by civilized nations, human rights defenders and scientists of reasoned documents on the real role of unilateral sanctions in protecting human rights from tyranny and aggression.
Head of Belarus Coordination Council and key leader of Belarus democratic movement Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya stressed in October, 2024 in interwiew to our Association that Alena Douhan’s activities as UN Special Rapporteur, visiting regimes like Venezuela and Cuba to criticize sanctions, are also part of aggressor’s propaganda.
Now next Report A/79/183 from Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan “Access to justice in the face of unilateral sanctions and overcompliance”, was published on UN resources with next promoting of such propaganda acitivities.
In this report Douhan again had to mention that our Association support sanctions, but in common Rapporteur ignores in her report Ukraine’s activities on providing full and transparent access to justice to any sanctioned structure, with much Douhan’s attention to “Russian problems” in same time.
But in our submission on that issues, published at UN web-sources now, ARC’s experts stress that to ensure rule of law, “quality of law” and “legal certainty”, Position on the State Register of Sanctions was adopted by decree of the President of Ukraine, dated January 29, 2024 No. 36/2024, and, regarding Article 283-1 of Code of Administrative Justice of Ukraine, a statement of claim for the application of the sanction provided for in Clause 1-1 of the first part of Article 4 of the Law of Ukraine “On Sanctions”.
ARC stressed again in that submission that UN bodies must participate in the policy of issuing the recommendations on access to justice regarding sanction policy and producing analyses on those issues, but their impartiality must be guaranteed by multinational expert presentation in such UN body, but not in a way, as it happens now with Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan.
Reports of non-governmental structures and universities on those issues must be evaluated taking into account the possibility of control over them by government (regime) that is under the unilateral sanction policy, ARC added. Our work to informing the UN about real situation with sanctions and human rights will be continued, despite the dissemination of aggressor’s propaganda by Russia-controlled persons and units.
