International cooperation
The Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus along with other state bodies provides legal protection of the rights and interests of our state, renders legal support to our citizens and organizations abroad. The International Cooperation Department performs this function within the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus.
The International Cooperation Department was founded on July 1, 1992. Since 1992 the Ministry of Justice has begun to form an international treaty framework for cooperation between Belarus and foreign states in the legal sphere, to establish instruments for protection of interests of citizens, organizations and the state abroad.
On the basis of international treaties on legal assistance our citizens and organizations are given the right to address the justice institutions of other states, to sue, to bring petitions, and carry out other procedural actions as an equal, therefore such treaties are very important. They promote the development of relations both at the level of citizens and at the level of subjects of foreign economic activity, that is of great importance for such an export-oriented state as ours.
Currently, over 100 international treaties in legal sphere have entered into force for the Republic of Belarus. Our country has concluded interstate treaties on mutual legal assistance in civil and criminal matters, extradition, and legal cooperation with countries such as Bulgaria, China, Cuba, the Czech Republic, Hungary, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Pakistan, Poland, Qatar, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Sri Lanka, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
The Ministry of Justice is defined as the central body for coordination of realization of relevant international obligations according the majority of treaties and conventions in legal sphere. For the purpose of appropriate carrying out this work it became necessary to establish the Division for the Implementation of International Treaties, which was formed on October 1, 1997.
The Division for the Implementation of International Treaties organizes execution of requests from foreign justice institutions in the territory of the Republic of Belarus and, accordingly, examines and forwards requests of Belarusian institutions of justice for execution to foreign states. With the expansion of cooperation between states in this area, the amount of rendered legal assistance increases and, accordingly, the number of requests, received by the Division, increases.
Besides the work on conclusion of international treaties, ensuring their execution, a significant part of the activity of the Department is provision of conclusions on correspondence of all international treaties to the national legislation. This work requires a thorough knowledge of all national legislation.
One of the areas of activity is participation in the legal support for integration processes with the involvement of the Republic of Belarus.
In 2011-2014 the Ministry of Justice coordinated the activities of governmental bodies within preparation of the draft Treaty on the Eurasian Economic Union, which was signed on May 29, 2014. Currently the Ministry is providing legal conclusions regarding draft decisions of the EAEU bodies, as well as coordinates the work of the Belarusian part of the Consolidated Working Group on improving the provisions of the aforementioned Treaty.
A productive mechanism for cooperation with legal departments of foreign states is specialized formats of international interaction between ministries of justice. The relevant bodies operate within the framework of the Union State of Belarus and Russia, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
The Ministry of Justice is organizing work on the implementation of international humanitarian law in Belarus, through the activities of the Commission on the Implementation of International Humanitarian Law under the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Belarus, which ensures cooperation with the International Committee of the Red Cross.