The United Nations Human Rights Council has kicked off a new session in Geneva with sharp criticism of Russia for its full-scale invasion on Ukraine.
Speaking on February 27 at the opening of the session, which runs until April 4, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said nearly 100 million people were forced to flee conflict last year, a record number, and that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights “is under assault from all sides.”
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered the most massive violations of human rights we are living today,” the UN chief said. “It has unleashed widespread death, destruction, and displacement. Attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure have caused many casualties and terrible suffering.”
Coming just three days after the first anniversary of Moscow’s unprovoked invasion of its neighbor, the session is expected to be dominated by calls from members for an extension to a UN investigation probing alleged war crimes in Ukraine.
Kyiv itself has said a special tribunal should be set up to pursue and prosecute the actions of Russia’s leadership and make sure they are held accountable for any crimes committed in Ukraine.
Guterres said the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights already has documented dozens of cases of conflict-related sexual violence against men, women, and girls.
“And serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law against prisoners of war — and hundreds of cases of enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions of civilians — were also documented,” he said.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, speaking at an event on the sidelines of the council’s session, said Russia’s alleged forced transfer of thousands of children from Ukraine is “probably the largest forced deportation in modern history.”
UN Human Rights chief Volker Turk followed Guterres in addressing the main session, warning that Russia’s “senseless” invasion of Ukraine was an example of how gains to human rights were being chipped away from ordinary global citizens.
“The old authoritarianism, with its brutal limits on freedoms writ large, and the suffocating straitjacket of patriarchy,” said Volker, who took over the position in October. “The old destructive wars of aggression from a bygone era with worldwide consequences, as we have witnessed again in Europe with the senseless Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
Russia has denied targeting civilians in the conflict and says it hasn’t committed war crimes in Ukraine. It has also accused Ukraine several times of committing atrocities.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov is expected to address the council on March 2. Ryabkov’s appearance at the UN forum is the first by a Russian official since the start of the war on February 24, 2022.
Moscow was suspended from the council in April but is still allowed take part as an observer.
The UN Human Rights Council, which aims to protect human rights worldwide, does not have legally binding powers. Its sessions highlight human rights issues and abuses, which often spark investigations that are essential for gathering evidence to prove that offenses are taking place.
The meeting is also expected to discuss the situation of Uyghurs and other Muslims in China.
The U.S. State Department has said that as many as 2 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and members of Xinjiang’s other indigenous, mostly Muslim, ethnic groups have been taken to detention centers.
China denies that the facilities are internment camps, but people who have fled the province say members of these groups are undergoing “political indoctrination” at a network of facilities officially referred to as reeducation camps.
A UN report made public in 2022 found that the detention of Uyghurs and other Muslims by China may constitute crimes against humanity.