The Interview With Human Rights Defender Victoria Fedorova Is Released on Our Channel

In October 2022, the Human Rights Committee issued Decision No. 2919/2016 on the communication of human rights defender, Head of the human rights organization "Legal Initiative" Victoria Fedorova. The Committee stated that the Republic of Belarus has violated its obligations under the Covenant by denying Victoria access to general information about the prison conditions of administratively arrested and detained persons.

In September 2015, Victoria addressed five district departments of internal affairs, to which temporary detention facilities are assigned, with a request to provide information about the detention conditions in the latter. The departments failed to satisfy any of her requests, claiming that the requested information was classified and could be used exclusively for “internal purposes”. Appeals turned out to be unsuccessful: the courts refused to consider them due to the lack of jurisdiction.

In November 2016, Victoria filed a complaint with the Human Rights Committee, stating that the Republic of Belarus has violated her rights guaranteed by Part 3 (a) of Article 2, Article 14, and Article 19 of the Covenant.

We asked Victoria to tell us more about the reason for contacting the Committee, the essence of the complaint, communication with state representatives in the process, and reflection on the issued decision. You can watch an interview with Victoria Fedorova about the decision and work on it on our YouTube channel (the interview is conducted in Russian).