MINSK, 28 February (BelTA) - Belarus is in favor of peaceful evolution of human rights, Belarusian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Yuri Ambrazevich said at a session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, BelTA has learned.
The Belarusian diplomat recalled that the world has recently celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This document was drawn up immediately after the Second World War. "The intellectuals of that era tried to prevent the emergence of new fascism, a repetition of the horrors of the war that the world had just experienced. The authors of the declaration believed that if all states committed to observing human rights, or rather preventing violence of the state against the individual, one race or social group against another, which was seen as the root of the fascism ideology and its monstrous atrocities, the genocide of the people of Belarus among them, then the basis for civil and international conflicts would disappear," Yuri Ambrazevich said.
According to him, the declaration, together with the two covenants that followed, was a beautiful attempt to formulate a single standard that all peoples must meet to ensure peace and harmony both within and between countries.
"However, political life in different states turned out to be much more complex and diverse than the ideals on paper. Every nation solves its problems by its own methods and provides opportunities for the development of the individual and the entire society, for the balance of their interests through the set of its own criteria and tools shaped throughout history. The Universal Periodic Reviews, the hearings of the UPR reports in the treaty bodies, the reports on human rights in Western countries issued by the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs show us that there are no states that fully comply with the letter of international human rights documents,” Yuri Ambrazevich noted. “Does this mean that we must abandon the search for harmony in relations between the state and the individual, the majority and minorities, and appropriate legal mechanisms and guarantees? Of course not."
Yuri Ambrazevich said that Belarus continues to work in this direction. The recent amendments to the Constitution were adopted by referendum, which is direct democracy. "We have strengthened the role of the Parliament. We are creating our own institution of democracy - the Belarusian People's Congress with specific powers in the strategic areas of our life. Political parties are playing an increasingly active role in Belarusian society. Everything is going the way that the Belarusian people define: steadily, gradually, in an evolutionary way," the diplomat stressed.
