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MINSK, 24 June (BelTA) - Western countries are applying so-called double standards in human rights as a way to exert pressure on sovereign states. This is mentioned in the introduction to the second joint report of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation on the human rights situation in individual countries, BelTA has learned.
“Belarus and Russia continue to maintain that one of the most serious problems in human rights protection is the practice of using so-called double standards when assessing various human rights situations and phenomena. It is telling that this approach is regularly used by Western countries to escalate confrontation and exert pressure on sovereign states, as demonstrated in the specific country sections of the report,” the report states.
The Belarusian and Russian sides emphasize: “With their brazen approach to the promotion and protection of human rights, Western countries completely undermine their own rhetoric about the universal nature of human rights.”
It is abundantly clear that Western countries use human rights issues to satisfy their own political interests and interfere in the internal affairs of states they disapprove of: those with independent foreign policy agendas and a commitment to their own historical, cultural, and religious values and norms. Examples include the long-standing efforts by Western states to artificially keep the topic of “mass human rights violations” in the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus on the international agenda.
The second joint report of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation on the human rights situation provides assessments of selected countries, including those that consider themselves “developed democracies”, claim to be “exemplary” in terms of human rights protection, or intend to join this group. The study compiles factual information on human rights violations in these countries, based on data from international and national sources, as well as materials from human rights NGOs.
In preparing the document, the authors took into account recommendations from international universal and regional human rights mechanisms, particularly treaty bodies (committees) and regional institutions, especially European ones, addressed to the governments of the countries under review.
Most of the examples cited in the report are well known and demonstrate the need for the entire constructive international community to join efforts to address these challenges.
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