GENEVA, December 10, 2024 — A UN watchdog group has called for the United Nations’ top human rights official to resign by January 1st, after an investigation yielded damning examples of the “High Commissioner” placing political considerations before blatant abuses of human rights across the globe.
According to a new UN Watch report, “Blind Eye to Dictatorships,” High Commissioner Volker Türk stayed “silent on gross and systematic violations of human rights” in countries known to commit heinous human rights abuses. The report reviewed and tallied statements initiated by Mr. Türk during his tenure of from October 2022 through October 2024.
Key findings of the report include:
• UN human rights chief Volker Türk condemned the United States more than the combined total of his condemnations of China, North Korea, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.
• Türk for the past two years was completely silent on gross and systematic violations of human rights committed by the regimes of Cuba, North Korea, Algeria, Eritrea, Mauritania, Lebanon, and Qatar. At the same time, he had no trouble criticizing democracies such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, and France.
• Even when Türk did criticize some of the most oppressive regimes, he ignored many of their worst offenses. For example, he made only three criticisms of China, yet even in these he never mentioned Beijing’s imprisonment of more than one million Uyghurs in concentration camps.
• Türk was obsessed with condemning Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, making 58 condemnations during the past two years, most on the Hamas-Israel war. To put this in perspective, over the same two years, he criticized the Maduro regime only 4 times. Turk has made more statements on Gaza than the combined total of his statements on Ukraine, Sudan, and Myanmar. To put this in perspective, although the war in Sudan also began in 2023, it has already killed tens of thousands of civilians and has created over 2 million external refugees, which is nearly as many refugees as the entire population of Gaza. Another 7.7 million Sudanese have been left internally displaced.
• Despite his position as the highest independent voice in the UN human rights system, Türk was silent when the UN elected serial abusers like China, Cuba, Qatar, and Eritrea to the Human Rights Council, which now has a membership that is 60 percent non-democracies, and he was silent when the Islamic Republic of Iran was made Chair of the UN Human Rights Council Social Forum.
.@volker_turk As the the U.N.’s highest human rights official, we urged you not to play into the hands of a regime that beats, blinds, tortures, rapes, and hangs innocent protesters.
The banner reads: “Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Dignity, Freedom, and Justice.”#بیشرف pic.twitter.com/D5xIGdQfjU
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) February 27, 2023
International human rights lawyer Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, issued the following statement:
“Today is the 76th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, announced to the world in 1948 by Eleanor Roosevelt, which was meant to be a response to barbarous acts which outrage the conscience of humankind. Yet today the UN’s highest human rights figure is systematically failing is duty to speak truth to power. Instead, all too often, he coddles dictators and whitewashes abuses. Volker Türk’s refusal to confront tyrants undermines the very principles the United Nations was founded to uphold.”
“Volker Türk’s tenure as UN rights chief has too often been defined by a blind eye to the world’s worst dictatorships. When victims cry out for justice, the last thing they need is a global human rights leader turning away in silence.”
“During his two years as the world’s highest human rights official, Volker Türk routinely avoided criticizing some of the world’s worst human rights abusers, many of them powerful players at the UN who sit on its Human Rights Council, such as China, Qatar, and Cuba.”
“So far in his tenure, Türk has failed to initiate a single statement about China’s forced detention of a million Uyghurs. The world’s top human rights official, who is uniquely authorized to act independently and hold governments to account, needs to speak truth to power and not pull punches in deference to political pressure.
“His focus on condemning certain democracies far more than gross abusers of human rights such as North Korea, Cuba and Qatar, is absurd. While democracies must be held to account, a moral and merits-based approach would demand that the High Commissioner devote more of his office’s limited time and resources to those human rights victims in the world who suffer severe and systematic oppression, and who have no recourse to free and fair elections, an independent judiciary, freedom of speech, and other basic institutions of democracy that act as a check and balance to executive power. ”
“Mr. Volker Türk has failed to be a moral voice for the millions of human rights victims who most require the world’s help, and he has failed to speak out boldly and immediately in the face of egregious human rights violations.”
“When the people of Iran, Venezuela, and Myanmar look to Geneva for moral clarity, they deserve a High Commissioner who will stand with them, not with their oppressors. Volker Türk’s record has too often been one of absence when presence was needed most.”
“The role of the UN rights chief is not to appease abusive regimes but to hold them accountable. By failing to name and shame the worst violators, Volker Türk has betrayed countless victims of tyranny and repression.”
“In light of our findings, we are calling on Mr. Türk to resign from his post. In the event that he has not resigned by January 1st, we are calling on all Western democracies to pull out of the UNHRC. It is time to stop lending legitimacy to a UN human rights system that has become corrupted by selectivity, politicization, and the dangerous domination of dictatorships.”
