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Presidential Administration invites opinions on need of national human rights ombudsman

The National Center for Legislation and Legal Studies of the Presidential Administration has sent out a letter to the concerned government agencies and organizations inviting them to express their opinion as to whether Belarus needs to establish the institution of national human rights ombudsman and their proposals for its possible functions and powers.

There has been recurrent talk at the government level of the need for a national human rights ombudsman for some 18 years, but there has been no progress on the matter.

In January this year, Pyotr Miklashevich, chairman of the Constitutional Court, told reporters that the Court “generally supports the idea of establishing the institution of the human rights ombudsman because this would really be an additional guarantee of the protection of the rights and liberties of our citizens.”

“A draft law to this effect was in the works at some time in the past. I think we’ll soon return to this issue at the government level,” he said.

A year earlier, on January 26, 2011, Mr. Miklashevich said at a news conference that the Constitutional Court would support a proposal to establish the position of ombudsman. The office of the ombudsman would be an “additional tool to ensure the constitutional guarantees of citizens’ rights,” Mr. Miklashevich said at the time.

In the early 2000s, the Belarusian authorities did draft a bill that would establish the position of human rights ombudsman, which was seen as a condition for restoring Belarus' Special Guest status in the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, suspended since 1997.

However, the bill, which would expectedly provide for the ombudsman (human rights commissioner) to be appointed by the president, was never submitted for debate.

In the spring of 2008, Alyaksandr Lukashenka said in his annual address to the nation and the National Assembly that Belarus did not need any ombudsman.

“Even without a human rights ombudsman, we ensure our citizens’ rights of life, security, a normal job, and of being able to feed their families,” the Belarusian leader said.

The establishment of an ombudsman’s office would not soften the West’s criticism, he noted. “They find fault with us not because we have less human rights protection than the West or the East,” he said. “For example, we didn’t go to another country to kill people and hang its leader; our aircraft carriers are not patrolling in another country’s coastal waters. What could be more important than the right of life?”

“No matter how many various offices we may institute, we’ll still be treated in the same way, that is, until we start acting like mongrels catching crumbs that fall off the lord’s table,” Mr. Lukashenka said. //BelaPAN