The UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Belarus, Nils Muižnieks, has prepared a report on violations of women’s rights in Belarus. The report notes that discrimination against women in Belarus is systemic and structural and that the use of legislation for repressive purposes has become a tool of political persecution and violations of fundamental rights.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s Advisor on Inclusion and Equality, Julia Mickiewicz, comments on the report:
“Since the start of repression in 2020, which continues and is even intensifying, women of different political views, professions, ages, and with different vulnerabilities have also been subjected to widespread political persecution.
In 2025 alone, at least 355 women were convicted in criminal cases. And among the nearly 7,000 people on the so-called ‘extremist lists’, one in four is a woman. Women are dismissed from their jobs because of their political views, threatened with having their children taken away, and targeted alongside their lawyers and relatives. Women political prisoners who are released receive no rehabilitation support and are forced to leave the country.
Behind bars, women political prisoners are held in inhumane conditions. They are denied underwear and menstrual hygiene products, have limited access to showers, are subjected to humiliating searches, and are monitored by video surveillance even in toilets. They are forced to sew uniforms for the security forces for meager pay. They are denied medical care, even when seriously ill, and cases of deaths in custody have already been reported.
Importantly, the report shows that this repression has grown out of longstanding structural inequality, which the state deliberately entrenches through propaganda promoting so-called ‘traditional values’. Women hold only 4.3% of government positions, earn 24–28% less than men, and perform 1.7 times as much unpaid domestic and care work. Years spent caring for children and relatives are barely counted towards pension eligibility, and in 2025, fathers took parental leave in only one in every 100 families. A list of professions prohibited to women is still in place, and positive statements about being child-free can result in administrative penalties.
The country has no law on gender-based violence. Sexual violence cases are investigated through the lens of physical force and resistance rather than the absence of consent, while women remain silent about domestic violence for fear that the state will take their children away. Following the dissolution of independent civil society organizations, many services for survivors simply disappeared, and the state has not replaced them.
We are grateful to Nils Muižnieks for ensuring that the voices of Belarusian women, including those who have been imprisoned, are heard at the UN level. The regime’s refusal to recognize the Special Rapporteur’s mandate and their attempts to portray UN recommendations as ‘persecution’ only confirm that the regime has no intention of making any changes voluntarily.
For our part, we will continue to document violations and are already working to develop inclusion and equality policies for New Belarus. A democratic Belarus is impossible without equal rights and safety for every woman”.
