Inside Geneva: how to hold China to account

The UN Human Rights Council is set to discuss Ukraine, Ethiopia, Iran, and more. Inside Geneva podcast host Imogen Foulkes asks: what about China?

“If there’s no pressure coming from the international community, if there’s no scrutiny over China, if there’s nothing happening, China is basically going to take it as a sign that they’ve got the green light to continue their abuses,” says Zumretay Arkin, spokesperson at the World Uyghur Congress.

Last year a UN report suggested China may have committed crimes against humanity in Xinjiang. UN member states voted – narrowly – not to debate that report. 

“Of course, there’s a geopolitical understanding of what’s happening, but we have to get back to the essence of human rights, and we have to get back to the essence also of the treaties that this system was created to uphold,” says Raphaël Viana David, China and Latin America advocate at the International Service for Human Rights.

This week on the Inside Geneva podcast: human rights activists say what they think should happen now.

“The fact that we came so tantalisingly close to having a resolution on China adopted at the council has actually shattered a really important taboo about the ability to take on China and any state, no matter how powerful,” says Hilary Power, UN Geneva director at Human Rights Watch.

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