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United Nations Human Rights Council
Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has triggered the most massive violations of human rights in the world today, the head of the United Nations said on Monday, as the war pushed into its second year with no end in sight. The Russian invasion has unleashed widespread death, destruction and displacement, UN Secretary-General Antnio Guterres said in a speech to the UN-backed Human Rights Council in Geneva. After failing to capture the Ukrainian capital in the opening weeks of the invasion and suffering a series of humiliating setbacks in the east and the south during the fall, Russia has stabilised the front and is concentrating its efforts on a slow push to capture the rest of the Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland of the Donbas. Ukraine, meanwhile, hopes to use battle tanks and other new weapons pledged by the West to launch new counteroffensives and reclaim more of the occupied territory. He said attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure have caused many casualties
UN Secretary-General Antnio Guterres on Monday stressed the importance of legal challenges against climate-wrecking corporations" like fossil-fuel producers, ratcheting up his call for the fight against climate change - this time before the UN's top human rights body. Guterres opened the latest session of the Human Rights Council, part of an address that decried summary executions, torture and sexual violence in places like Ukraine; antisemitism, anti-Muslim bigotry and the persecution of Christians; inequality and threats to free expression, among other issues. Guterres also sought to undergird the concept of human rights which have faced "public disregard and private disdain and tie them together with environmental concerns. "Human rights are not a luxury that can be left until we find a solution to the world's other problems. They are THE solution to many of the world's other problems," he said. From the climate emergency to the misuse of technology, the answers to today's cri
The United Nations' human rights chief on Tuesday decried increasing restrictions on women's rights in Afghanistan, urging the country's Taliban rulers to reverse them immediately. He pointed to terrible consequences of a decision to bar women from working for non-governmental organisations. Last week, Taliban authorities stopped university education for women, sparking international outrage and demonstrations in Afghan cities. On Saturday, they announced the exclusion of women from NGO work, a move that already has prompted four major international aid agencies to suspend operations in Afghanistan. No country can develop indeed survive socially and economically with half its population excluded," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Trk said in a statement issued in Geneva. "These unfathomable restrictions placed on women and girls will not only increase the suffering of all Afghans but, I fear, pose a risk beyond Afghanistan's borders. This latest decree by the de f
Opposition leaders on Friday criticised the government for abstaining from voting on a draft resolution in the UN Human Rights Council on holding a debate on the human rights situation in China's restive Xinjiang region, saying India should speak for what is right and should not be afraid of its neighbour. Senior Congress leader and Lok Sabha member Manish Tewari wondered why there was "so much diffidence on China". "The Government of India will not agree to a Parliamentary debate on Chinese incursions. India will abstain at UNHRC on a resolution for debate on human rights in Xinjiang," he tweeted. He alleged that the Ministry of External Affairs does not accord political clearance to Parliamentarians to visit Taiwan. Trinamool Congress spokesperson Saket Gokhale tweeted, "Giving them our land and abstaining on holding them to account. What exactly is it that makes (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi so afraid of China?" AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi wanted to know from the prime minis
Warning that Afghanistan faces deepening poverty with 6 million people at risk of famine, the U.N. humanitarian chief on Monday urged donors to restore funding for economic development and immediately provide $770 million to help Afghans get through the winter as the United States argued with Russia and China over who should pay. Martin Griffiths told the U.N. Security Council that Afghanistan faces multiple crises -- humanitarian, economic, climate, hunger and financial. Conflict, poverty, climate shocks and food insecurity have long been a sad reality in Afghanistan, but he said what makes the current situation so critical is the halt to large-scale development aid since the Taliban takeover a year ago. More than half the Afghan population -- some 24 million people -- need assistance and close to 19 million are facing acute levels of food insecurity, Griffiths said. And we worry that the figures will soon become worse because winter weather will send already high fuel and food ..