Earlier we reported that, as part of ongoing interaction with UN bodies, our Association periodically sent our submissions 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 criminal actions of the Russian Federation against the Ukrainian people, including violations of human rights by the aggressor, including the situation in occupied Crimea.
The submissions, prepared by Professor Borys Babin, emphasized 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.
It is worth admitting, that we did not have any particular hopes for the effectiveness of submitting information to Geneva on this issue, since we were aware of the real goals and objectives of the current UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights, Belarusian citizen Alena Douhan.
However, simply ignoring this mandate and the corresponding activities of the relevant UN official may, in our opinion, lead to even more dramatic consequences. This was confirmed by the current Report from Special Rapporteur Ms. Douhan “Monitoring and assessment of the impact of unilateral sanctions and overcompliance on human rights” A/HRC/57/55, published recently on UN resources.
This document contains many attempts to criticize the sanctions policy of democratic countries, and at the same time it admits that the responses for its compilation “were received only from states subject to unilateral sanctions,” including the regimes of Moscow, Minsk, Damascus, Bosnian separatists, as well as Guyana, Myanmar and Ecuador; and large international NGOs also ignored this process.
At the same time, in her report to the General Assembly A/HRC/57/55 (paragraph 44), the UN Special Rapporteur was forced to admit that our Association demanded that the UN methodology for monitoring and assessing the impact of unilateral sanctions include indicators of their impact on the observance in the sanctioned country of the rights of vulnerable minorities and indigenous peoples, the right to life and freedom from torture and discrimination, that is, exactly what Professor Babin repeatedly demanded in the submissions.
In fact, this was the only place in the report A/HRC/57/55 where the reasons for imposing sanctions against modern dictatorships were actually emphasized: dictators’ massive and total violation of fundamental collective and human rights.
The conclusions of the report A/HRC/57/55 on this issue recognized the need to monitor the impact of unilateral coercive measures on the ability of states under sanctions to fulfill their international obligations in accordance with conventions and other acts of international law, which includes compliance by rogue states with minimum standards of fundamental human rights.
Therefore, our Association believes that the strategy of ignoring the activities of the UN Special Rapporteur from Belarus Alena Douhan is fundamentally wrong and that it should be replaced by a mass submission 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.
