UN rights chief urges more resources invested in human rights work

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) The recently-appointed United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Thursday called for more resources to be invested in human rights work, drawing particular attention to monumental crises, Ebola and Islamic State (IS) militants.

Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein, who assumed office as the new UN human rights chief in early September, told a press conference that human rights are currently under greater threat due to the crises and conflicts taking place in different places.

The top human rights official said that human rights are recognized as one of the three pillars of the UN system, with development, and peace and security make up the other two.

“Without good governance, rule of law, and human rights protection, peace and development efforts can be seriously compromised,” Zeid al-Hussein said.

However, the resources at his office’s disposal were limited, he noted, calling for more funds to better support the UN human rights office in carrying out its tasks on many fronts, including intervening in ongoing crisis, investigating allegations of abuses, and pressing for accountability.

He attached particular importance to “the twin plagues” of Ebola and IS militants.

With regards to the Ebola outbreak, he stressed that the role that neglected human rights — in particular the rights to health, education, sanitation, development and good governance — played in creating this crisis had barely been discussed.

“It is vital that human rights be integrated into the response to this appalling tragedy, because only a response that is built on respect for human rights will be successful in quashing the epidemic,” said Zeid al-Hussein.

In addition, the potential of this deadly disease to contravene the human rights of those who survive was yet another topic that had not been adequately addressed, Zeid al-Hussein said.

“As the international community accelerates its medical assistance, it is also vital that every person struck down with Ebola be treated with dignity, not stigmatized or cast out,” he added.

Zeid al-Hussein said that his office was in the midst of drawing up guidelines on quarantine procedures as the practice could easily violate human rights if injudiciously imposed and enforced.

As for the IS fighters who are seizing land along the border of Iraq and Syria, the senior human rights official referred to the situation as the “antithesis of human rights.”

“It is a diabolical, potentially genocidal movement, and the way it has spread its tentacles into other countries, employing social media and the internet to brainwash and recruit people from across the globe, reveals it to be the product of a perverse and lethal marriage of a new form of nihilism with the digital age,” he warned.

The veteran diplomat called on the Iraqi government to take “an immediate step” to “accept the exercise of the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction with respect to the current situation,” including the alleged human rights violations and abuses committed in Iraq.

The UN human rights chief said that his office would issue another update on lives claimed in war-torn Syria, a conflict that has been going on for three years, and the number would exceed 200,000.

Zeid al-Hussein, a prince from Jordan, worked as Jordan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations before replacing Navi Pillay as the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

He was the first High Commissioner to be appointed from the Asian continent and from the Muslim and Arab worlds. /End/