On Wednesday 3 April 2019, Dr Anaïs MARIN gave a high-level lecture at the College of Europe in Natolin entitled "Domestic drivers of Belarus' foreign policy balancing". During the lecture, Dr MARIN focused on the authoritarian governance features and domestic political issues on the current agenda, placing them in the wider geopolitical context.
Dr Anaïs MARIN is a French political scientist specialised in IR, border and Russian studies. In 2011 she joined the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, a Helsinki-based think tank, as Belarus expert. In that capacity, she published academic articles, op.-eds and policy briefs on Belarus’ domestic and foreign policies, the EU’s Eastern Partnership and Eurasian geopolitics. In 2015, she joined Collegium Civitas (Warsaw) with a Marie Curie fellowship to conduct research on the "dictaplomacy" of authoritarian regimes in post-Soviet Eurasia. She is now affiliated with the Centre of French Civilisation at the University of Warsaw. Alongside her academic and policy advocacy activities, Dr MARIN regularly conducts election observation missions with the OSCE/ODIHR in ex-USSR.
In September 2018, the Human Rights Council (Geneva) appointed her UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Belarus, a pro bono mandate established in the framework of the UN's Special Procedures following the crackdown on dissent that followed the 19 December 2011 presidential election in Belarus. Her latest publication: Belarus chapter in the Chatham House report Civil society under Russia’s threat: building resilience in Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova (ed. M. Boulègue and O. Lutsevych), London, November 2018.