Updated Directive No. 1: how Belarus’ approaches to public security have changed

Among the documents issued by the President of Belarus, directives occupy a special place. They are adopted, as a rule, in exceptional cases, when the maximum concentration of the forces of society and the state is required to achieve a specific goal. Accordingly, the reasons for their appearance should be very strong. Therefore, in the history of Belarus, there are few of them – only 12.

Directive 1 was issued on 11 March 2004. It was called “Measures to Strengthening Public Safety and Discipline”. It was necessary to reverse the situation with losses (primarily human), which the country suffered due to indiscipline, negligence, neglect of security, drunkenness. The usual measures were not enough. The President then decided to act militarily. The directive is not from the usual civil vocabulary. In a way, it was an extraordinary measure. Hard, though certainly not repressive, and it has fully justified itself.

The situation has changed over time. On the one hand, security and discipline have improved markedly, and on the other, new threats have emerged. In response to the time requirement, Directive No. 1 was adopted in September 2026. The number is now called “Public safety – the basis of a favorable social environment”.

But most importantly, the nature of the document has changed dramatically. Now this is not a set of requirements and instructions for direct action to the heads of organizations, but a list of priority areas of state policy and tasks for state bodies in the field of security. The scope of the document has also expanded. Information security and digital literacy, countering drug trafficking on the Internet, control of external migration, environmental safety and sanitary and epidemiological well-being of the population of the country were added to this.

Many of the previous provisions, for example, in the field of labor protection, have been transferred from the Directive to other normative acts, the same Law on labor protection and the Labor Code. A lot has changed, including the name. Instead of the “Measures to Strengthening Public Safety and Discipline”, it was “Public Security – the Basis of a Favorable Social Environment”. And if the previous version was a set of direct instructions to the heads of organizations, then the new one is built differently – it is a list of priority directions of state policy and tasks for ministries and departments.

Overall, the document has changed a lot. And above all, his character. What other innovations have occurred and how the updated Directive No. 1 now works – in the report of ONT.