MOSCOW, March 03. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is leaving for Geneva on Monday, where he will participate in the 25th session of the UN Human Rights Committee.
“At the elections to the Committee on November 12, 2013, Russia received support from 176 nations,” Russian Foreign Ministry said. “We consider it a high level of international support for our efforts aimed at establishment of a competitive dialogue and cooperation at the Committee.”
Russia is “concerned” about the situation at the Human Rights Committee which developed there while Russia was not there, the ministry said.
“We are concerned about the growing level of confrontation and politicisation, lower intergovernmental character of the Committee’s work, undermined trust to that importat UN body,” the ministry says. “Realistically, the Human Rights Committee repeats the history of the UN former human rights commission, which fate is well-known - it was dismissed back in 2006.”
The Committee has been focusing on the monitoring component, the source said.
“There are no problems about this kind of work as it is, but at the Committee it seems to affect other directions, which are no less important,” the Foreign Ministry said. “Much less are opportunities for discussing topical issues of the human rights, the human rights’ encouragement does not receive sufficient attention. We plan to be working on this.”
Russia’s position is that the main principal of the Committee’s and of the entire UN human rights’ activities “should be equal-right cooperation between countries, based on respect for sovereignty.”
“All parties should follow this approach in their activities and should refuse from double standards and narrow political concerns,” the Foreign Ministry said. “This is the only way to avoid politicisation of the human rights direction in the international relations. We shall be promoting actively this approach at the Committee, including by means of its resolutions.”
Moscow says activities of the international community in encouraging and protection of human rights “should comply strictly with the international law.”
“Fighting for human rights or democracy should not justify actions, contradicting the UN Charter or norms and regulations of the international law,” Russian Foreign Ministry said. “The rule of law in international relations must be respected as well as inside a country.