Researchers from the Center for European Transformation and the Flying University present a report on the results of a study on the implementation of the practice of the employment ban in Belarus from 2020 to 2022.

During the political crisis in 2020 and the subsequent period, the repressive practice of the employment ban in Belarus became one of the main tools of suppressing civil political activity and dissidence, along with the use of violence, deprivation or restriction of freedom, intimidation, expulsion from the country, etc. The application of the employment ban currently differs from the previous periods in the contemporary history of Belarus not only as for the scale, but also as for the change of forms and goals.

For a more in-depth analysis of the employment ban practice in today’s Belarus and its consequences for the economy and society as a whole, the Center for European Transformation, together with the Flying University, launched a monitoring study. This report expands on the results of the first phase of this research, covering the second half of 2020 to the first half of 2022, supplemented with data for the second half of 2022, along with a description of the new identified trends.

The purpose of the study was to analyze the implementation of the employment ban practice in Belarus in 2020-2022.

The objectives of the study included:

1. collection of material and analysis of employment ban cases;
2. highlighting of the main characteristic features of the employment ban in the modern situation (grounds, goals and tactics of the authorities, strategies and tactics of the repressed);
3. identifying of key issues and their aftermaths for society and individuals;
4. identifying of directions to counteract negative consequences.

As an empirical basis for the study we used:

• monitoring data from open sources (media, Telegram channels) from December 2020 to December 2022 (about 300 cases of dismissals or other types of the employment ban in various fields were collected);
• data from the Belarusan PEN collected during the monitoring of violations of cultural rights and human rights of cultural workers in terms of dismissals in the period of 2021-2022 in the field of culture and related areas directly linked to culture (203 cases);
• data on layoffs in the cultural sector collected by the Belarusan Council of Culture by the end of 2022 (88 cases);
• data on doctors and healthcare workers affected by repressions, collected by the Medical Solidarity Foundation of Belarus (219 cases);
• results of the online survey conducted as part of this study (the field stage was implemented in May-June 2022, 141 questionnaires were collected);
• results of in-depth interviews with representatives of various fields affected by the employment ban (1st stage: May-June 2022, 20 interviews; 2nd stage: August-September 2022, 10 interviews).

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