Volker Türk; 55 conflicts in the world and one UN Human Rights Chief

I’m off to the Palais Wilson this week, for a chat with UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk, the last in our series of exclusive interviews with those who lead the UN’s human rights work. You can hear that interview in full in our latest Inside Geneva podcast.

Imagine trying to defend human rights in 2023. Türk started the job just over a year ago. In his in tray: the war in Ukraine, appalling repression of women’s rights in Afghanistan, a world emerging from a pandemic which showed in brutal clarity just how unequal, how unfair, our planet remains.

And then…a vicious war in Sudan, in which violations, including atrocious sexual violence, are unchecked. A further deterioration, if that’s possible, of the situation in Haiti, where violent gangs took control of large urban areas, terrifying the local populations.

As if that wasn’t enough, the Middle East, a festering sore always threatening to erupt, did so. A brutal attack by Hamas on Israel brought violent retaliation from Israel, and the conflict we have failed to resolve for 70 years is claiming lives, thousands of them, once again.

Never again

So when I go to see him, I’m not expecting Volker Türk to be too cheerful, in fact I’m half expecting our meeting to be postponed, because he really is very busy.

But no, he is there, smiling, and eager to demonstrate the purpose of our interview, marking the 75^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by showing me his own personal copy of it, given to him at high school over 40 years ago.

Türk is Austrian, and like many of his generation (he was born in 1960), he was brought up keenly aware of his country’s past. “In light of the history of my own country, the Holocaust”, he tells Inside Geneva, “atrocities that were committed by Austrians during the Second World War, it was very formative for me to say ‘OK what has to happen in this world so that we come to this never again attitude.’’

He spent many years with the UN Refugee Agency, which brought home to him that a key reason people flee is because their human rights are being violated. He wanted, he says, to be “on the other side” of that, to try to work more in prevention.

He didn’t, unlike a number of his predecessors in the job of UN Human Rights Commissioner, hesitate when offered the job.

Baptism of fire

Still despite his enthusiasm, he can hardly have prepared for the baptism of fire his first year in the job has been. As the war between Hamas and Israel raged on, Türk went to the Middle East, stood at the Rafah crossing, and called out both sides for committing war crimes. Unlike some UN leaders who talk of “possible” war crimes, or behaviours that “could constitute” war crimes, Türk was quite definitive, these (hostage taking, and the collective punishment of Gaza) were war crimes.

It was a statement which enraged Israel, whose government did not allow Türk to visit, although he did go to Egypt and Jordan. No conflict polarises opinion quite so much as the Middle East, and those suffering violence want, understandably, to be shown support. But Türk, like many humanitarians, has no wish to take sides, unless it’s the side of humanity.

“I was at the border to Gaza in Rafah, I met Palestinian children, who had injuries that I have rarely seen in my life,” he told me. “Spine injuries, some of them couldn’t even talk, because they were in such deep trauma and shock. I also met families of Israeli hostages and I saw their pain.”

“There is immense suffering out there, and that suffering is created from humans to humans. I also see that some of the suffering is not seen by the other side, so it is really important that each and everyone understands that the suffering is happening on all sides.”

What’s to celebrate?

That, in a nutshell, is what humanity is lacking right now; the ability to have empathy for the suffering of another, the recognition that war, while it may feel like the right thing to do, can only cause more suffering.

But who is going to listen to such lofty thoughts right now? Türk, let’s not forget, had hoped to devote his first year in office to a celebration of the 75^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration. Instead, he’s been responding to ever increasing conflict (there are, he told me, 55 conflicts raging in our world right now) and ever more human rights violations.

So what, really, is there to celebrate? In fact, Türk would prefer to think of this year not as a celebration, but as a commemoration, and, hopefully, as a recommitment. He’s got a rather prosaic, but persuasive, analogy to remind us why our fundamental standards, like the Universal Declaration, are so important.

“We actually have traffic regulations,” he explains. “And they exist because otherwise people would get killed. It’s the same on the human rights front, and that’s why the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is so important.”

So hold that thought: it’s a good idea to have laws against things that might kill us, including international laws that can restrain us when we feel inclined to turn, murderously, on one another.

But Türk also thinks 2023 should be the year when we confront our own failures, and understand that putting human rights at the centre of our lives (and not as a nice to have after thought when things go bloodily wrong) could actually be our salvation.

“We cannot afford just to stay in the present, we need to learn from our crises today, to make it better in the future. I hope that if there is one single message that comes across, it’s that the centrality of human rights has to be much more pronounced than ever before.”