Attachments
Human Rights Council
Fifty-eighth session
24 February–4 April 2025
Agenda item 4
Human rights situations that require the Council’s attention
Summary
In the present report, submitted pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 55/27, the Group of Independent Experts on the Situation of Human Rights in Belarus presents its findings. It first examines the root causes of the human rights violations committed since May 2020, highlighting that the violent response to the mass protests surrounding the 2020 presidential election was the latest manifestation of a long-standing pattern of repressive governance. It then demonstrates that those violations persisted and affected an ever-increasing number of people in 2023 and 2024, while the authorities continued to restrict civic and democratic space in anticipation of the 2025 presidential election.
The Group found that the Government of Belarus had continued to rely on arbitrary arrests and detentions – frequently accompanied by torture or ill-treatment – as its primary method of silencing dissent. It also documented that the thousands of Belarusians arrested and tried on politically motivated grounds had been systematically subjected to a separate and harsher regime of detention designed to punish and humiliate them. Those practices, along with heightened surveillance and well-founded fears of rearrest, continued to force many into exile, where an increasing number faced criminal proceedings in absentia.
Drawing on its findings and building upon the work of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Group found further evidence of crimes against humanity, specifically imprisonment and persecution, having been perpetrated against a significant segment of the population defined by its real or perceived political views. The Group concludes with recommendations urging the Government of Belarus to engage meaningfully with it and the United Nations, immediately release all those detained on politically motivated grounds and implement comprehensive reforms to address the structural root causes of the human rights violations documented since May 2020.