“Human rights in Afghanistan are in a state of collapse,” he told the Human Rights Council, before sounding the alarm over ongoing reports of extrajudicial killings, torture and ill-treatment and arbitrary arrests and detentions, as well as serious violations against former Government officials, as documented in a new human rights office (OHCHR) report.

“Compounding all of this is a deeply troubling lack of accountability for perpetrators of human rights violations,” he said.

Women cancelled out

Highlighting the “devastating precedent” set by Afghanistan as the only country in the world where women and girls are denied access to secondary and higher education. Mr. Türk underscored the “long list of misogynistic restrictions” confining the country’s women “to the four walls of their homes”, before asking: “What can possibly come next?”

The High Commissioner insisted that any prospect of a stable, prosperous Afghanistan rests on the participation of men and women.

“Denying women and girls’ rights to participate in daily and public life not only denies them their human rights, it denies Afghanistan the benefit of the contributions they have to offer,” he said.

Constitution on hold

Mr. Türk said that the suspension of the Afghan constitution and of laws protecting women from violence or guaranteeing media freedom, as well as the dissolution of the country’s Independent Human Rights Commission, were elements of the “systematic erosion of the institutions that once provided some protection for human rights”. 

The High Commissioner called on the de facto authorities to “change course” and bring Afghanistan back to the international fold with full respect for its international human rights obligations.

He insisted that the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) will continue to monitor and report on the situation, as well as “raise individual cases and urge compliance with international law by the de facto authorities” to the greatest extent possible.

Mr. Türk paid tribute to the work of his human rights colleagues on the ground, especially Afghan female staff.

He also exhorted the international community not to “turn its back on Afghanistan” at a time when rights were being eroded and two-thirds of the population were in need of aid, while humanitarian operations were hindered by the ban on women working for the UN and NGOs.

‘Feeling betrayed’

Mr. Türk’s comments came a day after the Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, delivered a sombre update to the Council.

Many Afghans living abroad “say they feel ‘betrayed’ by the international community”, the Special Rapporteur explained. They are calling for concrete action and some have even started a hunger strike “calling for recognition of gender apartheid”.

In June, Mr. Bennett had said that since systematic and institutionalised discrimination against women and girls was at the heart of Taliban ideology and rule, Afghanistan’s de facto authorities “may be responsible for gender apartheid” which, although “not yet an explicit international crime”, required “further study”.

Repression of minorities

Mr. Bennett also briefed the Council on Monday on the “collapse of civic space” and “absence of rule of law” since the Taliban takeover, the long-term impacts on children’s development and mental health, and the repression and lack of representation of minorities such as Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and Turkmen.

“I’m concerned about the effect [that the] strong sense of discrimination and exclusion held by large parts of the population may have on the stability of Afghanistan,” he said.

Special Rapporteurs are not UN staff and are independent from any government or organisation. They serve in their individual capacity and receive no salary for their work.

Addressing the forum in Geneva, Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada-Al Nashif also urged the Sri Lankan authorities to accelerate investigations and prosecutions probing cases of human rights violations, in particular, the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings.

Ms. Al-Nashif noted that investigations should comply with international human rights standards. Her comments follow repeated calls to the Government of Sri Lanka to establish an independent probe into the bombing campaign that left 269 people dead and additional 500 injured.

Socio-economic strife

Although the Government has implemented economic recovery policies, the country continues to be gripped by the aftermath of the deep economic crisis of 2022 and stresses in the global economy, the UN deputy rights chief said.

The legacy of that crisis “has impacted the poor and marginalized communities the most”, Ms. Al-Nashif explained, noting that another 2.5 million people had been driven into poverty between 2021 and 2022, while an estimated 37 per cent of households face acute food insecurity.

The Deputy High Commissioner emphasised that such hardship has given rise to tensions and further protests. These have also been sparked by issues of land acquisition in the north and east of the country for the expansion of military installations.

Tensions continue

The UN human rights body also heard that delays in holding local government elections combined with the laws that limit people’s right to political participation and protest had also increased tensions.

“Our Office continues to receive cases of misuse of tear gas and water cannons during demonstrations, affecting protestors and media personnel,” Ms. Al-Nashif said.

While recognizing the Government’s proposal for a new truth-seeking mechanism as part of efforts to promote reconciliation across Sri Lanka in the aftermath of a brutal civil war, she emphasised that more needed to be done.

“Fourteen years since the war ended, tens of thousands of victims and their families continue to suffer in agony and grief as they wait for truth, justice, and remedy, said Ms. Al-Nashif.

“Truth seeking alone is not sufficient and must be accompanied by clear commitment to accountability.”

‘Unproductive and unhelpful’: Sri Lanka responds

Sri Lanka rejected the OHCHR findings, its conclusions and recommendations relating to the two resolutions under which the UN rights office is mandated to investigate and report on the country. 

In a statement, Sri Lanka said the report was an “unproductive and unhelpful drain” on resources, which did not reflect the situation on the ground, claiming that OHCHR had ignored the nation’s “democratic resilience”.

“The frequency and intensity of war crimes and crimes against humanity has only increased in recent months,” said Nicholas Koumjian, head of the investigation team, formally known as the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM).

‘Brazen bombings’

Addressing the forum in Geneva, he described even “more brazen aerial bombings and indiscriminate shelling, resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians including children. We have also seen increased executions of captured combatants and civilians and intentional burnings of homes and villages.”

Listing a series of further violations including torture, sexual violence and arrests, Mr.Koumjian highlighted the lack of due process and accountability for war crimes, particularly within the Myanmar military.

The development follows an appeal from UN Secretary-General António Guterres to Myanmar’s military rulers who seized power in a coup on 1 February 2021 to “listen to the aspirations of its people, release all political prisoners, and open the door to a return to democratic rule”.

Evidence and information 

“We continue to face the challenge of not having access to Myanmar. Our repeated requests for information and access have been ignored by the military authorities,” Mr. Koumjian told the Human Rights Council.

Delegations including the European Union, Finland, Canada and Costa Rica condemned the violence, while numerous other countries urged the military junta to allow the IIMM access to the country.

Among the Council’s 47 Member States, China, Iran and Russia underscored the principle of national sovereignty regarding external intervention.

Despite a lack of physical access to Myanmar, the head of the investigation team highlighted the unprecedented and unanticipated level of information that had been collated – facilitated by witnesses as well as modern technology.

“None of our work would be possible without the courage and commitment of the many individuals and organizations that provide us with information,” Mr. Koumjian said.

We understand this Council did not create our Mechanism to simply place evidence in storage,” he continued, emphasising that the evidence has been shared with the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Criminal Court (ICC) and in Argentina where international criminal proceedings are ongoing, surrounding crimes against the Rohingya. 

Persecuted minority

The Mechanism continues to actively investigate the violence that led to the large-scale displacement of the Rohingya from Myanmar in 2016 and 2017.

“We have collected compelling evidence of the widespread burning of Rohingya villages and the assaults and killings of civilians. I have been particularly horrified by the numerous accounts of sexual crimes that we have collected,” Mr. Koumjian told the Council.

Just last month, UN human rights chief Volker Türk marked the sixth anniversary of the start of a massive offensive by Myanmar’s military against the mainly Muslim minority in Rakhine state, reiterating the call for justice after hundreds of thousands of Rohingya were driven from their homes by security forces.

Some 10,000 Rohingya men, women, children and newborns are believed to have been killed, with more than 300 villages burnt to the ground and over 700,000 forced to flee to Bangladesh in search of safety, joining tens of thousands who fled earlier persecutions.

On Monday at the Council, countries including Bangladesh echoed Mr. Türk’s earlier call for a sustainable return for the Rohingya to their homeland.

“The Myanmar people are suffering deeply from the effects of these ongoing horrific crimes,” Mr. Koumjian said. “I would like them to know that the Mechanism is committed to pursuing justice for them and focusing all our efforts to ensure that the perpetrators will one day be held to account.”

The investigators

The Myanmar investigation team was created by the UN Human Rights Council in 2018 and became operational in August the following year.

Its mandate is to collect evidence of the most serious international crimes and violations of international law and prepare files for criminal prosecution, making use of the information handed over to it by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar.

The Mechanism is composed of impartial and experienced professional and administrative personnel. It does not have its own police force nor its own prosecutors or judges. 

Addressing the opening of the Council’s 54th session, Mr. Türk strongly condemned the “old, blunt, brutal politics of repression” as exemplified by a rise in military coups and the crushing of dissent – “in short, the fist”. 

Following military takeovers in Niger and Gabon, he insisted that the “unconstitutional changes in government” such as the ones seen recently in the Sahel are “not the solution”. 

“We need instead an urgent reversal to civilian governance, and open spaces where people can participate, influence, accompany and criticise government actions – or lack of action,” he said. 

Interlinked rights and development challenges

Mr. Türk said that the challenges faced by countries in the Sahel, which leave their populations “struggling for daily survival”, are interlinked.

The devastating impacts of climate change, lack of investment in essential services and weak governance “are the sources that violent extremism draws from”, he warned. 

He also sounded the alarm over mass-produced “lies and disinformation” aided by new technologies and emphasized that “people everywhere want – and have the right to… objective information, not propaganda.”

‘Leave no one behind’

The UN rights chief underscored that over his years of service with the UN it had become clear to him that development issues “underlie almost every challenge we face”. 

“Leaving no-one behind is not an empty slogan. It is a human rights action plan that reaches across the whole spectrum of human rights”, he said.

He deplored the fact that the world was “betraying [its] promise” to end hunger and poverty by 2030. 

‘Collective human rights failure’

Some 600 million people are projected to be chronically undernourished at the end of the decade according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) despite the massive financial and technological resources at our disposal, Mr. Türk said. 

He also stressed that 1.2 billion people, nearly half of them children, now live in “acute multidimensional poverty” and risk being joined by millions more as a result of climate change,  as projected by the World Bank. 

“This is a terrible collective human rights failure,” he stated. 

Fight against inequalities

The High Commissioner detailed steps to address the “abyss between rich and poor” and the inequalities preventing humanity from achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

He spoke about the need for a reform of the international financial architecture offering “fairer deals on debt relief”, urgent funding for developing countries in the form of an SDG Stimulus, a push towards international tax cooperation and a reinvigorated global fight against corruption and illicit financial flows.

Environmental accountability

Mr. Türk also called for “effectively financed human rights-based climate action” to help developing countries adapt to the effects of climate change, to which they contributed so little, and offset the damage done.  

He stressed the need for a “rapid, equitable phase-out of fossil fuels” and welcomed the consideration of measures to ensure “accountability for environmental damage”, such as the proposed inclusion of the international crime of “ecocide” in the Rome Statute of the UN-backed International Criminal Court.

‘Politics of indifference’

In his address the UN rights chief highlighted a wide range of human rights crises around the world. He said that he was shocked by the “nonchalance” and the “politics of indifference” in the face of more than 2,300 people reported dead or missing in the Mediterranean this year, “including the loss of more than 600 lives in a single shipwreck off Greece in June”. 

He strongly condemned the fact that many more migrants and refugees were dying “unnoticed” in Europe, in the Bay of Bengal, on the border between the United States and Mexico and beyond. 

Russia’s warfare in Ukraine ‘horrific’

Mr. Türk also spoke about Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the “horrific warfare” which has ravaged the country. 

“The Russian Federation’s withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative in July, and attacks on grain facilities in Odesa and elsewhere, have again forced prices sky-high in many developing countries – taking the right to food far out of reach for many people,” he said.

He reiterated his “deep concerns” regarding restrictions on fundamental rights in Russia and “particularly severe oppression” of the anti-war movement and human rights activists, as exemplified by the harsh prison sentences handed down to opponents Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza.

Palestine and Iran

The High Commissioner expressed his “profound shock” at the escalating violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as well as concern over the “continuing civic space restrictions” by the Palestinian Authorities and de facto authorities in Gaza. 

He also deplored the “inadequate” accountability for the death of Mahsa Amini in Iran one year on and reiterated his concerns over restriction on the rights of women and girls, as well as the renewed deployment of the morality police, a force “almost exclusively aimed” at controlling them.

‘Repugnant’ Quran burnings

The “fabrication of artificial disputes over gender” was part of what Mr. Türk called “the politics of division and distraction”. In this context he brought up the “repugnant” series of some 30 recent incidents of burning the Quran to “create divisions, both within societies, and between countries”.

He announced that he would discuss this topic in detail on 6 October, as mandated by a resolution adopted during an urgent debate at the Council’s previous session.

Minute of silence

Monday’s meeting opened with a minute of silence honouring the victims of the devastating earthquake in Morocco on 8 September, which has so far claimed at least 2,100 lives. 

The Vice-President of the Council, Permanent Representative of the Gambia to the UN in Geneva Muhammadou M.O. Kah, urged solidarity with the victims, stressing to delegations present that they were “not just representatives of nations or organisations” but “part of a global community, humanity”. Morocco’s ambassador Omar Zniber thanked delegates for the gesture and the Geneva-based organisations for their support.

Marathon session

The Human Rights Council’s 54^th session will run until 13 October at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. During the marathon five-week session, the Council will focus on the human rights situations in Afghanistan, Belarus, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Ukraine among others.