Belarus: OSCE humanitarian agenda should not become an instrument of political pressure

The OSCE humanitarian agenda should not become an instrument of political pressure. Deputy Foreign Minister of Belarus Igor Secreta said this today, October 21, at the OSCE human rights event “Vienna Discussions”, which was held in the format of a video conference.

Igor Secreta emphasized:

- In the current environment, the international human rights agenda is increasingly subject to political disagreements. Instead of uniting states around common principles and universal commitments, we often see attempts to use humanitarian issues as a tool for political pressure and promoting selective approaches.

In his view, this inevitably affects trust between states and calls into question the ability of existing international mechanisms to effectively carry out their tasks.

“The OSCE platform is just not a good, but nevertheless an illustrative example of the most acute disagreements on humanitarian issues,” the Deputy Foreign Minister of Belarus emphasized. We are now seeing many challenges within the human dimension: there is no consensus on the package of humanitarian events, their themes and conditions for participation; there is an ongoing dispute over the holding of the annual meeting in Warsaw and the status of the Warsaw Conference on the Human Dimension, organized by the ODIHR Chairmanship.

Igor Secreta stated that a number of Western delegations still use the humanitarian dimension for political manipulation:

- The object of such a far-fetched and sophisticated approach is often Belarus and Russia. It is the deepening of divergences regarding the OSCE’s humanitarian work that contributes to the development of alternative discussion formats such as this. We proceed from the premise that the human dimension of the OSCE should remain a space for equal dialogue, professional discussion of problems and the search for solutions, and not become a tool for pitting states against each other.

The forum was attended by the leadership of foreign policy, other state and public agencies of Belarus and Russia, representatives of the Swiss OSCE Chairmanship, diplomats, experts and activists of public organizations from Belarus, Russia, Switzerland, Kazakhstan, Israel, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Spain, Serbia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, USA, Poland, Greece, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as specialized OSCE institutions.