There are several mechanisms within the United Nations human rights system that have been deployed:
In September 2020, the Human Rights Council adopted Resolution 45/1 on the situation of human rights in Belarus in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election and in its aftermath. The resolution condemns acts of torture, enforced disappearance, abduction, arbitrary detention, sexual and gender-based violence, arbitrary deprivation of life, and calls upon Belarusian authorities to fulfil their human rights obligations. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights will present her report on the situation in Belarus in March 2021 on the implementation of Resolution 45/1.
Although the resolutions of the Human Rights Council are not binding in nature, Belarus is a member of the United Nations and, at the very least, the adoption of the resolution entails reputational risks for the Belarusian leadership. Voting on the Human Rights Council resolution is preceded by a session where state representatives, as well as outside experts, can express their position, encouraging dialogue and keeping Belarusian events in the spotlight.
**Special Procedures **of the Human Rights Council refer to independent experts or working groups, tasked with studying human rights in a particular sphere (thematic mandates) or a particular country (country-specific mandates). The mandate of the **Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus **has been in existence since 2012.
Current Special Rapporteur Anaïs Marin has been active in responding to the post-election crisis and mobilising the international community to pay closer attention to human rights abuses in Belarus. Independently and jointly with other special rapporteurs, she has issued statements calling to stop attacks on peaceful protesters, acts of torture, and threats to women human rights defenders. She spoke during the 45th session of the Human Rights Council, where Resolution 45/1 was adopted and **presented **at the informal **Arria Formula **%20believe%20it)meeting at the United Nations Security Council.
Special Rapporteur Marin also spoke regarding Belarus at the **75th General Assembly **of the United Nations in October 2020 and at the 46th session of the Human Rights Council in February 2021. Her report to the 47th session of the Human Rights Council, hosted from 21 June to 9 July 2021, described the repression of protests which began in August 2020 in response to rampant election malpractices, noting that the government’s reaction involved “the torture of arbitrarily detained persons in a seemingly premeditated way by police and affiliated forces; intimidation based on administrative resources and judicial harassment to push dissenters to self-censorship or exile; and an increasing trend towards the criminalization of activities promoting internationally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
Human rights abuses included the arbitrary deprivation of life in at least four instances of lethal police brutality against protestors in 2020. As of August 2021, the Special Rapporteur has not been allowed to enter Belarus in order to collect data in person; requests for the Belarusian government to allow her to engage with her mandate from the Human Rights Council have gone unanswered. The efforts to direct the attention of the international community to the dire human rights situation in Belarus are important to keep Belarus a priority on the human rights agencies’ agenda.
In March 2021, the Human Rights Council approved the Universal Periodic Review of Belarus. The Permanent Representative of Belarus to the United Nations Office and other International Organizations in Geneva, Yuri Ambrazevich, noted that Belarus had accepted 266 recommendations covering more than 100 thematic issues for consideration, but other speakers at the meeting on the discussion of the Universal Periodic Review of Belarus expressed regret about the rejected recommendations related to the ongoing unprecedented human rights crisis and declared that impunity serves as a fertile ground for the further growth of violence and human rights violations.
The United Nations human rights body toolkit also extends to tracking States’ human rights activities by rectifying and remediating violations through treaty body procedures (in this case, **the Human Rights Committee **and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women) of individual complaints. We have yet to review their decisions in cases related to protests.