Reply to Recommendation
| Doc. 12122
| 22 January 2010
- Author(s):
- Committee of Ministers
- Origin
- adopted
at the 1074th meeting of the Ministers’ Deputies (12-13 January
2010) 2010 - First part-session
- Reply to Recommendation
- : Recommendation 1874
(2009)
- Thesaurus
2. The Committee of Ministers recalls that the then Chairman
of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, Slovenian
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Samuel Žbogar, and the Deputy Secretary
General, Mrs De Boer-Buquicchio, held a number of high-level meetings
with the Belarusian authorities, including with Belarusian Foreign
Minister, Sergei Martynov, during their visit to Minsk on 8 and
9 June 2009. Meetings of the Chair of the Rapporteur Group on Democracy
of the Ministers’ Deputies (GR-DEM) and the representative of Belarus
to the Council of Europe are held after GR-DEM meetings at which
issues pertaining to Belarus are discussed. In addition, a representative
of Belarus took part in an exchange of views with the GR-DEM in
the context of a discussion held by the Group at its meeting of
10 December 2009 on the co-operation between the Council of Europe
and Belarus.
3. The Council of Europe Secretariat follows the situation in
Belarus constantly, through the ongoing contacts that the various
Directorates maintain with partner organisations in Belarus, in
a range of fields of activity. The issues referred to by the Assembly
as being of importance in monitoring the situation in Belarus closely
reflect the concerns of the Committee of Ministers; in this respect,
the Committee of Ministers welcomes the joint statement issued on
9 October 2009 by the Chair of the Committee of Ministers, the President
of the Assembly and the Secretary General, appealing to the Belarusian
President, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, to declare forthwith a moratorium
on the use of the death penalty in Belarus, and to commute the sentences
of all prisoners sentenced to death to terms of imprisonment. The
Committee of Ministers remains vigilant on other areas of importance
for the Organisation outlined by the Parliamentary Assembly (inter alia, freedom of association,
of assembly, of the media, electoral reform and the question of
alleged political prisoners).
4. On accession to conventions, in pursuit of the step-by-step
approach advocated by the Chairman of the Committee of Ministers
and the Deputy Secretary General further to their June 2009 visit
to Minsk, a technical-level meeting to examine practical legal and
procedural issues related to the possible accession of Belarus to the
Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings took place
in Strasbourg on 18 November 2009. The participants held an exchange
of views concerning the legislation and practice of Belarus as regards
action against trafficking in human beings on the one hand and the
main measures and requirements of the Council of Europe Convention
on the other hand, with a view to examining the possibility of Belarus
to accede to this Convention.
5. With regard to the European and Mediterranean Major Hazards
Agreement (EUR-OPA), the Committee of Ministers agreed in principle,
on 4 November 2009, to grant the request of Belarus to be invited
to accede to this Agreement.
6. The possibility of Belarus being invited to accede to other
Council of Europe conventions, including both those in which it
has expressed an interest (principally in the field of multilateral
co-operation on criminal matters), as well as the other conventions
(notably the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman
or Degrading Treatment) remains under discussion within the Committee
of Ministers.
7. The Committee of Ministers welcomes the development of relations
between Belarus and the Congress, as evidenced by the granting of
observer status to the Council for Co-operation of Local Self‑Government Bodies
at the Council of the Republic of the National Assembly of the Republic
of Belarus, and to the NGO “Lev Sapieha Foundation”, and assures
the Assembly of its support to the Congress in promoting the latter’s
aims and values in Belarus.
8. The Committee of Ministers would recall that the Council of
Europe Information Point in Minsk opened in June 2009, as a result
to no small extent of the political will of successive chairmanships
of the Committee of Ministers (Slovakia, Sweden, Spain and Slovenia)
to promote the establishment of this modest but essential structure
to raise awareness of the Organisation and to promote its values
and standards. The Information Point has now launched two Council
of Europe campaigns in Belarus (that against domestic violence against women,
and that in favour of the abolition of the death penalty), and will
pursue its work with the organisation of open lectures on the Council
of Europe and with related awareness-raising activities. It is also
nearing completion of its own website, in Russian and Belarusian.
Further activities could be developed in co-operation with the European
Union delegation and OSCE Office in Minsk.
9. Belarusian civil society representatives and NGOs continue
to participate in the meetings of the Conference of INGOs during
Assembly sessions, as well as in the work of the Conference’s Civil
Society and Democracy Committee and its Human Rights Committee.
A beginning has also been made to organising other actions in Belarus.
A seminar on the European Convention on Human Rights and criminal
justice was held in Minsk on 30 and 31 October 2009, in co-operation
with two Belarus NGOs, the Legal Initiative Organisation and the
Society for Comparative Legal Studies.
10. The Council of Europe can develop common actions with the
European Union in Belarus in the context of the Eastern Partnership,
in which Belarus is a full participant, in particular in the areas
covered by Platform 1 on democracy, good governance and stability
and Platform 4 on contacts between people.
