

The first and only Belarusian national hot line for domestic violence prevention celebrated its four-year anniversary in August, 2016. Since 2012 it has received 8,445 phone calls. The Belarusian non-profit “Gender Perspectives” runs the hotline from Minsk. They pioneered the...

May became a momentous month for western media coverage of Belarus. While Minsk was awash with foreign and local ice hockey fans taking in the World Ice Hockey Championship, the international press stuck to almost exclusively covering the matches...

On 10 September, the world marked suicide prevention day. Belarus ranks sixth in the world with regard to the number of total suicides that occur annually.Last year, about two thousand Belarusians committed suicide - higher than the number of road...

Post-Soviet mass discourse often portrays Belarus as a country of villagers. A big deal of that comes from the image of president Lukashenka himself. He has been director of a farm in Eastern Belarus before going into high politics and is famous for...

Lately many in Belarus talk about prohibition to sell cheap poor quality alcohol and fight against alcoholisation of population in Belarus. However, sales of vodka in Belarus amount to a half of the market share. Moreover, the government as watchdog...

In some areas, Belarus is very much like the rest of Europe. Its population is rapidly ageing. But unlike its western neighbours, Belarusians benefit from one of the lowest retirement ages in the world – 55 years old for women and...

As the economic crisis deepens prices on nearly all products rise sharply in Belarus with one remarkable exception - alcohol. These days a bottle of vodka in Belarusian restaurants often costs less than a packet of orange juice - US$3. In...