States should apply human rights laws and standards in a principled and consistent way

Resolving crises requires that States treat human rights as paramount and apply human rights laws and standards in a principled and consistent way, addressing the root causes of the situation. The selective and inconsistent application of international law is undermining the integrity of the framework and the institution, as well as the credibility, legitimacy and influence of States and other actors who engage in such double standards.

We continue to witness the commission of atrocity crimes across the world, including against Palestinians, Rohingyas, Sudanese and Uyghurs. In these situations, States and non-state actors have used dehumanising rhetoric (online and offline) to justify crimes committed with the intention ‘to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’.

Special Procedures have called on the international community not to ‘turn a blind eye to the atrocities and large-scale sexual violence unfolding in Sudan’ as well as to increase ‘funding for civil society to assist victims and for humanitarian response to provide life-saving assistance to 25 million people across Sudan in 2024.’

Over 40 UN experts and hundreds of human rights groups globally continue to call on the Council to uphold the integrity of its mandate and establish a monitoring and reporting mechanism on China. In its November 2022 Urgent Action decision, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) referred the situation in the Uyghur region to the UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect and ‘remind[ed] all States of their responsibility to cooperate to bring to an end through lawful means any serious breach of human rights obligations’. The CERD’s decision echoes the OHCHR’s findings of possible crimes against humanity in its assessment of the human rights situation in Xinjiang.

During HRC 55 the High Commissioner stated: ‘Four years ago, the International Court of Justice called on Myanmar to halt any activities that could violate provisions of the Genocide Convention. It ordered that the authorities protect Rohingya communities, preserve evidence of wrongdoing against them, and create conditions conducive to a safe, dignified and voluntary return to their places of origin. […]’ Repeating his “call to the international community to refocus its energy on preventing atrocities against all people in the country, including the Rohingya, notably by taking meaningful, effective, targeted action to end the military’s access to arms, jet fuel and foreign currency that it needs to sustain its campaign of repression against civilians.

In the context of 76 years of denial of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and return, Israel continues to impose its colonial apartheid and commit atrocity crimes with impunity. The Special Procedures have repeatedly raised alarm at the situation and called on States to implement an ‘arms embargo on Israel, heightened by the International Court of Justice’s ruling […] that there is a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza […]’. Special Procedures expressed their profound concern about ‘the support of certain governments for Israel’s strategy of warfare against the besieged population of Gaza, and the failure of the international system to mobilise to prevent genocid’.

ICJ provisional measures on Myanmar and Palestine based on similar legal cases, with States supporting the proceedings in one and opposing it in the other. This is also the reality when it comes to Member States voting on accountability mechanisms at the HRC. The lack of principled accountability efforts in one situation hampers accountability for other situations. The Council has a prevention mandate and UN member States have a legal and moral duty to prevent and ensure accountability and non recurrence for atrocity crimes wherever they occur.