June 13, Pozirk. Belarus along with Bangladesh, Ecuador, Egypt, Eswatini, Guatemala, Myanmar, the Philippines, Tunisia, and Turkey ranked among the ten worst countries for workers in the 2024 International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC) Global Rights Index.
Based on surveys of 340 national trade unions in 169 countries and focusing on fundamental worker rights, including freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike, the index identifies areas with inadequate protection of worker rights.
The ranking placed Belarus in a group of countries where worker rights are not guaranteed, as its authorities continue systematic harassment of independent trade unionists.
The index noted the escalation of reprisals in April 2022, when a wave of searches and arrests targeting independent trade unions swept across the country.
Currently, 42 trade unionists are wrongfully held behind bars on politically-motivated criminal charges following the dissolution of all independent trade unions. Others are deprived of their rights and freedoms, while those who are released “find themselves branded as ‘extremists’ and treated like pariahs in society,” the index said.
Last year, the International Labor Organization (ILO) adopted a resolution on Article 33 of its constitution “to secure the government’s compliance with the recommendations of an ILO Commission of Inquiry” following the “shocking decline of trade union rights and civil and political freedoms” in Belarus.
Meanwhile, dissident workers risk targeted arrests, while political prisoners, including trade unionists, are held in “inhumane conditions,” the index stressed.
