MINSK, 18 May (BelTA) – The United Nations Organization's multilateral platforms on human rights are nearly “privatized” by Western countries. Belarusian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Yuri Ambrazevich made the statement as he met with a delegation of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, BelTA has learned. The delegation arrived in Minsk for ministerial consultations about international cooperation for the sake of protecting and encouraging human rights.
During the meeting Yuri Ambrazevich mentioned the Belarusian government's adherence to developing and encouraging human rights in the country, including in compliance with the country's international commitments. He said he believes that the interpretation of provisions and the practice of realization of these documents in various countries increasingly differ and demonstrate initial contradictions in the very concept of human rights.
From Belarus' point of view the differences are natural and can be explained by the considerable difference in historical ways of evolution of the society in different countries. As a result, the countries have different attitudes to the understanding of social justice, harmony of individualism and public good, the level of acceptable restrictions of individual freedoms and the role of the state as their regulator and protector of public good.
Yuri Ambrazevich stated that due to the lack of a unified stance attempts of some countries to impose their approaches to human rights upon other sovereign countries became a divisive issue a long time ago. He stressed that due to various reasons the UN's multilateral platforms on human rights are nearly “privatized” by Western countries and more often than not broadcast only superficial criticism of Belarus, Russia, China, and a number of other countries, which do not accept Western hegemony and defend their national interests.
“The critics ignore peculiarities of the political moment in the development of our country, which we believe requires a solid and unambiguous policy in favor of a strategic union with Russia and normal mutually beneficial relations with other countries. They also ignore our obvious achievements,” the Belarusian deputy minister of foreign affairs said.
For instance, Belarus is one of the countries with the highest human development index. The country is ahead of three fourths of all the countries in this respect. Yuri Ambrazevich stressed that the protection of human rights is first and foremost a domestic affair of the specific country because the work is part of the daily routine of all the government agencies as well as state not-for-profit organizations and institutions.
Among other things the human rights concept is designed to ensure the protection of the individual from the tyranny of a societal group or the state. With this in mind the Belarusian government labors to build a peace-loving and open society without discrimination and violence, enable equal access of all citizens to justice, and create effective and accountable state institutions on the basis of broad citizen participation, the diplomat stated.
In his words, just like Russia Belarus is solidly against using human rights as an international politics tool for promoting foreign policy interests of a group of countries and against the artificial promotion of the uniform interpretation of the human rights concept without taking into account peculiarities of development of every concrete country.
