President of Human Rights Council appoints members of new Group of Experts on Human Rights in Belarus

GENEVA (21 June 2024) – The President of the Human Rights Council, Omar Zniber (Morocco), has announced the appointment of Susan Bazilli (Canada), Karinna Moskalenko (Russian Federation) and Monika Stanisława Płatek (Poland) to serve as the three members of the new Group of Independent Experts on the Human Rights Situation in Belarus. Ms. Moskalenko will serve as chair. All three previously served as experts on the OHCHR (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights) examination of the human rights situation in Belarus, the mandate of which expired in April 2024.

With resolution 55/27 adopted on 4 April 2024, the Human Rights Council established, for a renewable period of one year, a group of three independent experts on human rights in Belarus to be appointed by the President of the Human Rights Council. 

The new group of experts will build on the work of and follow up on the findings in the reports of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus and the reports of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, prepared with the assistance of experts appointed pursuant to Council resolution 46/20 of 24 March 2021 and special procedure mandate holders.

The Group was further requested to:

• Provide an oral update on its work followed by an interactive dialogue at its fifty-seventh session (9 September-9 October 2024).
• Submit a comprehensive report at its fifty-eighth session (24 February-2 April 2025), including in an easy-to-read version and in an accessible format, to be followed by an interactive dialogue.

The President of the Human Rights Council sought recommendations from various stakeholders and expressions of interest to find highly qualified and impartial candidates to fill these positions. The Group’s members will serve in their personal capacities and will not be paid salaries for their work. 

Biographies of the experts:

Ms. Susan Bazilli (Canada)

Susan Bazilli, Director of International Women’s Rights Project (IWRP), is a lawyer, researcher, educator, and advocate who has worked globally on issues of women’s rights and human rights for the past 30 years. She is the author of numerous publications on women’s rights, including the ground-breaking text "Putting Women on the Agenda: Women, Law and the Constitution in Southern Africa". From 1998 to the present, Ms. Bazilli has been associated with the IWRP in Canada and at the international level. Her work has included women’s human rights training in the Balkans, the Baltic region, and East Africa, as well as missions for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, and various missions for the UN in South East Asia, Central Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Ms. Karinna Moskalenko (Russian Federation)

Karinna Moskalenko is a human rights lawyer who in 2001 became the first Russian lawyer to successfully plead a case at the European Court of Human Rights. Since 2017, she has been Director of Centre de la protection internationale in Strasbourg. From 1999 to 2007, she was a member of the Expert Council for the Plenipotentiary on Human Rights for the Russian Federation. Since 1999, she has been a member of Moscow Helsinki Group. She works as a legal expert for the Centre of Assistance to International Protection in Moscow, which she founded in 1994. The Centre has filed and won hundreds of cases before the European Court of Human Rights. Ms. Moskalenko is an honourable member of the International Commission of Jurists, where she was a Commissioner from 2003 to 2018. 

Dr. Monika Stanisława Płatek (Poland)

Dr. Monika Stanisława Płatek is a Professor and Head of the Department of Criminology within the Faculty of Law at the University of Warsaw. She further serves as Head of the Laboratory at the Executive Penal Law and Criminal Policy Unit. Dr. Płatek’s research focuses on penal systems, criminal and civil law, gender studies, and feminist jurisprudence. She has been a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge. In addition, Dr. Płatek has worked as an international prison and criminal justice expert, cooperating with regional and national organizations such as the OSCE and the Council of Europe, as well as with civil society. She has served as the Plenipotentiary of the Polish Ombudsman and provided legal and human rights expertise to the Human Rights Commission of the Polish Parliament. Her practical experience also includes monitoring human rights in places of detention and prison reform across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. 

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More information about the Group of Experts can be found at: https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/gie-belarus/index

For media queries, please contact: Todd Pitman, Media Adviser for the UN Human Rights Council’s Investigative Mechanisms, todd.pitman@un.org; or Pascal Sim, Human Rights Council Media Officer simp@un.org.