human rights council

A record one million Syrians displaced over six months, during six key battles: UN investigators

All parties to the seven-year Syria conflict and the States that support them should do “everything in their power” to prevent a full-scale military assault on Idlib, a high-level United Nations-appointed panel of investigators said on Wednesday.

UN human rights chief denounces grave 'assaults' on fundamental rights of Palestinian people

From arbitrary detentions and deliberate deprivation, to attacks against civilians and forced displacements, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, expressed “acute concerns” on Monday over the current human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Iceland to take vacated US seat on Human Rights Council

Iceland has for the first time been elected to the Human Rights Council, filling the seat vacated by the United States, which withdrew from the body last month, citing bias.

UN chief hails ‘very important role’ of Human Rights Council, as US withdraws, citing alleged bias

In response to the withdrawal of the United States on Tuesday from the United Nations body which is designed to promote and protect human rights around the globe, Secretary-General António Guterres said that he would have “much preferred” the US remain.

UN rights chief slams ‘unconscionable’ US border policy of separating migrant children from parents

As part of his final global update, the United Nations human rights chief on Monday voiced his deep concern over recently-adopted United States border protection policies that have seen hundreds of migrant children forcibly separated from their parents.

Stoking fear among followers is not clever politics but a recipe for self-destruction, warns UN rights chief

In a scathing address to the Human Rights Council, the top United Nations rights official on Wednesday warned political leaders who stoke fear and intolerance among their followers for the sake of their own ambitions are merely copying the behaviour of previous generations of once strong, but ultimately catastrophic, leaders and politicians.

‘Hell on earth’ in Syria’s eastern Ghouta must end – UN chief Guterres

Syria’s war-battered east Ghouta, the troubled Kasais region in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Northern Rakhine state in Myanmar, where violence has sparked a major exodus of Muslim Rohingyas, were all in the spotlight as the Geneva-based Human Rights Council opened its session today, with UN officials warning that these situations spiraled into crisis “because not enough was done, early and collectively, to prevent the rising horrors.”

General Assembly elects new members to UN Human Rights Council

The General Assembly today elected, by secret ballot, 15 States to serve on the Human Rights Council, the highest intergovernmental body in the United Nations system for matters relating to protection and promotion of human rights worldwide.

Myanmar violence may be “textbook" ethnic cleansing: Zeid

States which commit “the most egregious violations” should be excluded from the Human Rights Council, while violence in Myanmar may be “textbook…ethnic cleansing”, the UN’s top rights official said on Monday.

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UN and Africa: focus on Somalia; South Sudan and Mali

Hospital treats children affected by drought in Somalia

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