Category Archives: United Nations

UN human rights chief to forgo second term amid China trip criticism

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Michelle Bachelet, strongly criticised over Xinjiang visit, cites personal reasons for decision

The United Nations’ human rights chief has announced her decision to step down, citing “personal reasons”, amid weeks of speculation following her recent China trip that drew fierce criticism from activists and western politicians.

Writing on Twitter, Michelle Bachelet, who assumed the office of the UN high commissioner for human rights in 2018, said: “It is time to go back to Chile and be with family.”

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Home Office misled refugees about UN involvement in Rwanda plans, court told

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Letters to asylum seekers assured them UNHCR was ‘closely involved’ in deportation scheme, high court hears

The United Nations refugee agency has made a dramatic intervention to try to halt Priti Patel’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.

In a late submission of evidence, the UNHCR claimed the home secretary misled refugees over the organisation’s support for the plan. The agency has also said the scheme failed to meet the required standards of “legality and appropriateness” for transferring asylum seekers from one country to another.

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Al-Qaida enjoying a haven in Afghanistan under Taliban, UN warns

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Intelligence report raises fears country could again become base for international terrorists

Al-Qaida has a haven in Afghanistan under the Taliban and “increased freedom of action” with the potential of launching new long-distance attacks in coming years, a UN report based on intelligence supplied by member states says.

The assessment, by the UN committee charged with enforcing sanctions on the Taliban and others that may threaten the security of Afghanistan, will raise concerns that the country could once again become a base for international terrorist attacks after the withdrawal of US and Nato troops last year.

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Starmer urges PM to request India release UK citizen Jagtar Singh Johal

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Labour leader writes to Boris Johnson after UN working group declared Johal’s five-year detention arbitrary

Keir Starmer has asked Boris Johnson to intervene and request that the Indian government release a British citizen after a UN working group declared his five-year detention arbitrary and without any legal basis.

In a letter, the Labour leader asks why Johnson has not acted to ask for the release of Jagtar Singh Johal given the findings of the UN report on arbitrary detention last month.

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Blinken criticises Chinese ‘manipulation’ of high-profile UN visit to Xinjiang

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US secretary of state says conditions imposed on Michelle Bachelet prevented independent assessment of abuses against Uyghurs, including genocide

US secretary of state Antony Blinken has expressed concern over China’s “efforts to restrict and manipulate” the visit of the UN’s top human rights official to the Xinjiang region.

“The United States remains concerned about the UN high commissioner for human rights Michelle Bachelet and her team’s visit to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and PRC efforts to restrict and manipulate her visit,” Blinken said in a statement on Saturday.

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‘You hear bullets, you run’: Congolese refugees stream over Uganda’s border

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As thousands flee the latest fighting in DRC to join 1.5m already in Uganda, the UN’s food aid agency is stretched as never before

The rain will determine what time Uwimana Nsengiyuava gets on the truck to Nyakabande transit centre, where Uganda is hosting 20,000 refugees who, like her, have fled fresh fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Since March, up to 500 refugees a day have been silently streaming into the east African country via Kisoro, a picturesque district in south-west Uganda dotted with endless hills, streams and a lake.

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Europe silent on plight of detainees in Libya, says migration chief

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Federico Soda said there needed to be ‘more condemnation’ of the conditions in state-run detention centres in Libya

Europe has been accused by a senior international official of acquiescence over the plight of thousands of migrants in Libya held in arbitrary detention in “deplorable conditions”.

Federico Soda, chief of mission at the International Organisation for Migration’s mission in Libya, said not enough was being done by outside actors to try to change the war-torn country’s “environment of arbitrary detention and deplorable conditions” for migrants.

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Russian mercenaries accused over use of mines and booby traps in Libya

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Exclusive: UN investigators say Wagner Group fighters did not mark mines’ positions and may have rigged bomb to teddy bear

Russian mercenaries in Libya systematically broke international law by laying mines in civilian areas without any attempt to mark their location or remove the lethal devices, UN investigators have found.

According to a confidential UN report that will be made public in the coming weeks, fighters from the Wagner Group, a private military company that has been repeatedly linked to the Kremlin by western officials, also rigged booby traps to powerful explosive anti-tank weapons that were responsible for the death of two mine clearers working for an NGO.

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Xi Jinping defends China’s human rights record to visiting UN commissioner

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Leader warns against using issue as ‘excuse to interfere in internal affairs of other countries’ as Michelle Bachelet goes to Xinjiang

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has spoken with the UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, as she visited the Xinjiang region, warning against the politicisation of human rights as an “excuse to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries” and defending his government’s record.

It comes amid renewed defensiveness in Beijing after the publication of a significant data leak from Xinjiang’s security apparatus, including mugshots of thousands of detained Uyghurs and internal documents outlining shoot-to-kill policies for those who try to escape.

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UN rights chief’s visit to China will be held in ‘closed loop’, Beijing says

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Michelle Bachelet begins trip amid fears that authorities will use Covid restrictions as cover to limit her access

China has said the UN rights chief’s visit to the country this week will be conducted in a “closed loop” as previously agreed with the UN, referring to the Chinese model of isolating people inside a “bubble” in order to contain the spread of Covid-19.

The United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, embarked on a six-day trip to China on Monday. She will be visiting the southern city of Guangzhou and two locations in the Xinjiang region, where Chinese authorities have been accused of human rights abuses against Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic group.

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Number of displaced people passes 100m for the first time, says UN

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‘Staggering milestone’ calls for urgent international action to address underlying causes of conflict, persecution and the climate crisis, says high commissioner for refugees

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has said the global number of forcibly displaced people has passed 100 million for the first time, describing it as a “staggering milestone”.

The UN high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, said the grim new statistic should act as a wake-up call for the international community and that more action is needed internationally to address the root causes of forced displacement around the world.

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UN human rights commissioner criticised over planned Xinjiang visit

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Exclusive: Politicians accuse China of organising a ‘Potemkin-style tour’ for Michelle Bachelet

A group of 40 politicians from 18 countries have told the UN high commissioner for human rights that she risks causing lasting damage to the credibility of her office if she goes ahead with a visit to China’s Xinjiang region next week.

Michelle Bachelet is scheduled to visit Kashgar and Ürümqi in Xinjiang during her trip, which starts on Monday. Human rights organisations say China has forced an estimated 1 million or more people into internment camps and prisons in the region. The US and a number of other western countries have described China’s treatment of the Uyghur minority living there as genocidal, a charge Beijing calls the “lie of the century”.

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‘Sleepwalking through extinction’: China urged to end delays to Cop15 summit

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Covid lockdowns in host country frustrate scientists as no date in sight for key UN conservation conference after two years of delays


China has been urged to name a date for a key UN nature summit this year, amid growing frustration with Beijing and concerns among experts that we are “sleepwalking through this cataclysmic climate extinction”.

After two years of delays, governments had been scheduled to meet in Kunming, China, for Cop15 in late April to negotiate this decade’s targets to halt and reverse the rampant destruction of ecosystems and wildlife crucial to human civilisation. It had been hoped the summit would be a “Paris moment” for biodiversity, with China holding the presidency for a major UN environmental agreement for the first time.

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UN confirms death of one of last Rwandan genocide fugitives

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Phénéas Munyarugarama is second person wanted for their involvement in 1994 mass killings to die

One of the last five fugitives wanted for his role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Phénéas Munyarugarama, died in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002, UN prosecutors have announced.

Munyarugarama, a local army commander, “died of natural causes” and was buried in Kankwala, in the eastern DRC, the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) announced in The Hague.

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Zimbabwe denies harbouring deceased Rwandan genocide fugitive

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DNA shows body exhumed in the country was Protais Mpiranya, Rwanda’s most wanted fugitive

Zimbabwe has denied harbouring the Rwandan genocide fugitive Protais Mpiranya after it emerged that he died in 2006 and was buried in the country after living there for four years.

The 20-year manhunt for one of the world’s most brutal killers came to a decisive end in an overgrown cemetery outside Harare, but Zimbabwean authorities say they did not conceal his whereabouts.

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Shireen Abu Aqleh: UN security council condemns killing of journalist

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In rare unanimous statement, council calls for ‘immediate and impartial’ inquiry into the Al Jazeera journalist’s death

The UN security council has unanimously condemned the killing of Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh while she was covering an Israeli army raid in the occupied West Bank, diplomats said.

In a rare unanimous statement, the security council also called for “an immediate, thorough, transparent and impartial investigation into her killing”.

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Twenty-year search for Rwanda genocide suspect ends in Zimbabwe grave

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Exclusive: inside the manhunt for Protais Mpiranya, accused of Rwandan mass killings and the world’s most wanted war crimes fugitive

The 20-year manhunt for one of the world’s most brutal killers has come to a decisive end in an overgrown cemetery outside Harare.

The body of Protais Mpiranya, the former commander of the Rwandan presidential guard indicted for genocide, lay buried under a stone slab bearing a false name, which UN investigators tracked down and identified with the help of a critical lead found on a confiscated computer: the hand-drawn design for Mpiranya’s tombstone.

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UN leads £65m plan to stop huge oil spill off Yemen during first ceasefire in six years

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Decrepit tanker used for storage at risk of creating a disaster worse than Exxon Valdez in 1989

The UN is to stage a rare donor conference on Wednesday in a bid to raise the $80m (£65m) necessary to prevent an ageing oil tanker off the west coast of Yemen exploding and causing an environmental disaster potentially four times worse than the Exxon Valdez spill near Alaska in 1989.

The money is needed to offload more than 1.14m barrels of oil that have been sitting in the decrepit cargo ship, Safer, for more than six years because of an impasse between Houthi groups and the Saudi-backed government over ownership and responsibility.

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Priti Patel’s Rwanda plan for UK asylum seekers faces its first legal challenge

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Home secretary is violating international law, the UN refugee convention and data protection rules, say lawyers

The first legal action has been launched against Priti Patel’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda as the UN’s refugee agency raised concerns that the UK is “inviting” other European countries to adopt the same divisive immigration policy.

Lodged last Tuesday, the legal challenge states that the home secretary’s proposals run contrary to international law and the UN refugee convention, as well as breaching British data protection law.

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Angelina Jolie makes surprise visit to Ukraine

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Hollywood actor and UN envoy met refugees in the western city of Lviv on Saturday, its regional governor said

Hollywood actor and UN humanitarian Angelina Jolie made a surprise visit to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Saturday, the Lviv regional governor said on Telegram.

According to Maksym Kozytskiy, Jolie – who has been a UNHCR special envoy for refugees since 2011 – had come to speak to displaced people who have found refuge in Lviv, including children undergoing treatment for injuries sustained in the missile strike on the Kramatorsk railway station in early April.

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