Freedom House: Miklós Haraszti Must Stay UN Special Rapporteur On Belarus

Human rights activists called on the UN Council to extend the mandate of Miklos Haraszti for another year.

Sofya Orlosky and Colin Kantor, Program Managers of the human rights organization Freedom House, urge the UN Human Rights Council to extend the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus Miklos Haraszti, a Hungarian diplomat, for another year.

The vote on this issue will be held on June 30, Radio Svaboda reports. The mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Belarus was created in 2011 in response to the harsh repressions against the participants of the protest rally after the presidential "elections" in December 2010.

The main objectives of the Special Rapporteur are: to monitor the situation on human rights; give recommendations to the Belarusian government on how it can fulfill its obligations under international law; submit a report to the UN Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly on the situation in Belarus relating the observance of human rights.

The Belarusian government has refused to recognize the mandate of Miklos Haraszti, and did not let him into the country, so that he could study the situation on the spot. Haraszti was making his reports on the basis of the information that he could gather in the media and thanks to contacts with the Belarusian human rights defenders. In his latest report Haraszti said that the oppressive nature of the regime in Belarus had not changed.

Sofya Orlosky and Colin Kantor believe that without an independent monitoring mechanism, such as the UN Special Rapporteur's mandate, it is virtually impossible to ensure that Minsk will observe the human rights.