Volker Türk

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights - Called for UK to rescind proscription

Britain's High Court ruled on February 13, 2026 that the government acted illegally when it banned Palestine Action as a terrorist organization last summer—the first time a UK court has overturned a terrorism proscription through judicial review. The three-judge panel found that while the group's tactics of breaking into factories and damaging military aircraft were criminal, they did not meet the threshold for terrorism under law. The ruling calls into question arrests of more than 2,700 people and charges against 250 under the Terrorism Act.

Updated Feb 13

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights - Leading international condemnation of crackdown

Iran's last nationwide uprising killed roughly 500 people over several months in 2022. The current one has killed at least 6,842 people—and possibly more than 30,000—in just over five weeks. On January 24, 2026, the UN Human Rights Council voted 25-7 to extend an independent investigation into what officials are calling the deadliest mass killing in Iran's contemporary history. By January 27, the U.S. had deployed the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to the Middle East as President Trump weighs military strikes; leaked documents now reveal Supreme Leader Khamenei approved a premeditated blueprint for the crackdown months in advance.[1][2]

Updated Feb 4

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights - Leading international critic of U.S. drug‑boat strikes

On December 5, 2025, the Trump administration released a 33‑page National Security Strategy (NSS) that formally revives a 19th‑century idea of the Western Hemisphere as a U.S. sphere of influence, declaring a Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine and promising to reassert American preeminence across the Americas. The document codifies a shift already visible in 2025 military operations: air and missile strikes on alleged drug‑trafficking boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that had killed at least 115 people in 35 strikes by year‑end, the designation of major cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and naval deployments around Venezuela. This campaign, formally named Operation Southern Spear on November 13, 2025, culminated on January 3, 2026, when U.S. forces launched Operation Absolute Resolve, a large‑scale military strike on Caracas that captured President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, placing them in U.S. custody on narco‑terrorism charges—the first forcible regime change under the Trump Corollary.

Updated Jan 4