As we mentioned before, 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 Russia’s criminal actions against the Ukrainian people, and relevant violations of human rights by the aggressor, including the situation in occupied Crimea.
We informed in submissions, prepared by Professor Borys Babin, 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 current 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 recently on UN resources.
In that Report A/HRC/57/55 (paragraph 44), the UN Special Rapporteur was forced to admit, that ARC demanded for the UN methodology for monitoring and assessing the impact of unilateral sanctions to 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.
Now relevant ARC’s submissions to UN on those issues, as send in 2022, so submitted in spring of 2024, were published finally on UN Special Rapporteur’s web page.
So, as we wrote before, the strategy of ignoring the activities of the UN Special Rapporteur from Belarus is fundamentally wrong and 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.
