The "Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections" campaign announces the launch of an expert mission to monitor the presidential elections* in Belarus on January 26, 2025.

Since 2008, the "Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections" campaign has brought together the oldest human rights organizations in Belarus — Viasna Human Rights Center and the Belarusian Helsinki Committee — to monitor the observance of electoral rights for Belarusian citizens and assess elections for compliance with international standards.

After the rigged presidential elections of 2020, peaceful protests, and widespread persecution, amid a political crisis in Belarus, the authorities have scheduled the next, 7th presidential election for January 26, 2025.

The political situation in Belarus remains marked by ongoing repression related to the exercise of such fundamental rights as the right to political participation, freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom of association, and others. Thousands of civil society organizations and all opposition political parties were forced to dissolve; almost all independent media outlets were destroyed in the country, some of them were able to survive and were forced to work in exile; politicians, civil activists, human rights defenders, journalists, and many people who, according to the authorities, showed opposition views continue to be imprisoned in inhumane conditions.

The 2020 presidential election was accompanied by the ongoing harassment of the main independent candidates and members of their teams. Several participants in the election campaign have been imprisoned for several years on politically motivated sentences, without contact with the outside world, while others were forced to leave Belarus due to the risk of arbitrary criminal prosecution.

Thousands of citizens who took an active part in the 2020 presidential elections as members of initiative groups, volunteers, observers, and activists were prosecuted administratively or criminally. Thousands of citizens convicted for political reasons have been deprived of their voting rights. At least 300,000 voters were forced to leave the country due to the climate of fear or the threat of politically motivated persecution. At the same time, all of them were deprived of their right to vote due to the decision of the authorities not to establish polling stations abroad.

By scheduling presidential elections six months before the expected date, the authorities are instrumentalizing electoral procedures and adjusting the election date to political objectives, thereby violating the principles of legal certainty, predictability of elections, and equality of opportunity for candidates. The "Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections" campaign states that in conditions of state terror against people who are perceived as dissidents, fair and free elections are impossible, together with the real implementation of the principle of democracy and the electoral rights of citizens of Belarus. Real elections are not only, and not primarily, electoral procedures. First of all, any free election campaign requires conditions where rights and freedoms are fully realized, including freedom of speech, freedom of peaceful assembly and association, the right to political participation, and freedom from discrimination.

Monitoring by national and international observers plays an important role in establishing and maintaining trust in the process of expression of the will of citizens and its result. However, the crackdown on civil society, as well as the climate of fear created by the authorities, has resulted in the absence of any opportunity for comprehensive independent monitoring of all aspects of the electoral process in Belarus. The use of politically biased international observers by the authorities to legitimize these elections* only emphasizes the superficial nature of such "observation" and the lack of transparency of electoral procedures.

We would like to remind you that the task of human rights defenders in any government regime is to exercise civil control over the actions of the authorities. That is why the "Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections" campaign considers it necessary to monitor this election campaign to be able to document what is happening based on the information collected and continue to evaluate the actions of the authorities in terms of international standards of free and democratic elections.

Lacking opportunity to organize comprehensive monitoring of the election campaign, send our observers to election commissions and polling stations due to concerns for the safety of observers, we announce the launch of an expert mission aimed at assessing the compliance of the 2025 election campaign with international standards related to the conduct of real, free, and democratic elections, and informing the national and international public about our findings. The expert mission will collect and analyze information about the election campaign based on open sources and reports from voters from Belarus. We count on information from people in Belarus about violations during the election campaign and, at the same time, call for compliance with digital hygiene and safe communication rules. Concerned voters will be able to send us information about violations through an anonymous form and other secure information channels. The monitoring results will be published as a series of reports that will be available on the campaign's website and in other open sources.

*For this statement and other documents of the "Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections" campaign, the term "elections*" in relation to the 2025 election campaign is used with an asterisk to emphasize the perfunctory nature of this term, since any free and fair election campaign presupposes, first of all, conditions where rights and freedoms are fully realized, including freedom of speech, freedom of peaceful assembly and association, the right to take part in the conduct of public affairs, freedom from discrimination, which is currently practically absent in Belarus.