Human rights are “under threat” in a number of conflicts, yet are needed for the world to heal, a senior United Nations official has said.
Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, visited Dublin on Monday and told the Institute of International and European Affairs how “long-established laws of war” were being “blatantly disregarded with virtually no accountability”.
“Several governments are ignoring human rights law entirely or enforcing it selectively when it suits them,” he said.
“Others are withdrawing from international agreements and attacking global institutions and frameworks.
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“Hate speech and discrimination against minorities are driving us further apart. Inequalities are deepening.”
Referring to the war in Gaza, Mr Türk, who is Austrian, said Israel’s “repeated war crimes are a shock to our humanity”.
He noted the “mass killing” of Palestinian civilians, the blocking of aid, “the ensuing starvation of civilians” and the killing of journalists and humanitarian workers.
“Israel has a case to answer before the International Court of Justice and the evidence continues to mount. Peace has never been more urgent,” he said.
Ireland is seeking a place on the UN Human Rights Council for the 2027 to 2029 term. Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Harris is to outline the State’s case next week at the UN General Assembly in New York.
The council, composed of 47 member states, is the main UN body responsible for strengthening the promotion of human rights and for addressing situations where these are being violated.
Mr Harris is to host a high-level meeting on the fringes of the general assembly to outline the “thematic principles” that would underpin Ireland’s membership.
Mr Türk said that “while human rights are coming under attack, they are also the medicine we need to help our fractured world to heal”.
“Our work has shown time and again that when discrimination against communities is ignored, when civic space of dialogue is shut down, when dehumanisation is tolerated and even empowered, then grievance is festered and tensions build,” he said.
“So we need to invest much more at the national and global levels in heeding early warnings and in building peace by investing in dialogue and confidence measures.”
Gerard Keown, director of the political division in the Department of Foreign Affairs, said current conflicts and rights denials meant it was a difficult time for human rights globally, yet such principles had been at the core of Ireland’s foreign policy “since the very beginning”.
“The commitment to multilateralism, to the rule of law, has guided us from our first steps on the international stage of over a century ago,” he said.
“It has underpinned the commitment to achieving peace in our own country and created the conditions that led to the Good Friday agreement into peace in Northern Ireland.”
It has also underpinned the State’s long tradition of peacekeeping, humanitarianism and development co-operation as well as Ireland’s strong adherence to and support of the values that underpin the European Union, Mr Keown said.
He also said a failure to respect “international law, international humanitarian law, international human rights law” was occurring globally, in many conflicts including those in Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan, Afghanistan and Yemen.
“Whether it be the pushback on women’s rights and gender equality globally, or on the rights of LGBTIQ+ citizens, that, again, we witness in too many parts of our world. Our response can only be to strengthen our commitment to uphold human rights and to defend the multilateral system that underpins them,” he said.
