Volker Turk

The U.N. rights chief warned Monday that the world needed to change paths to avoid a future filled with military escalation, repression, disinformation, deepening inequality, and rampant climate change.

Opening a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Volker Turk stressed that "we are at a fork in the road."

People protest in support of the war in Gaza, in Washington Square Park on Labor Day on September 2, 2024 in New York City

The United States said Tuesday it was time to "finalise" a deal between Israel and Hamas to end the Gaza war, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's refusal to bow to pressure.

Pressure built for a Gaza ceasefire to be agreed at talks that resumed Thursday in Qatar, aiming to stop the spread of a war that the Hamas-run territory's health ministry said has killed 40,000.

A source with knowledge of the talks confirmed to AFP that they had begun in the Qatari capital Doha.

A United Nations team will travel to Bangladesh to investigate "atrocities" committed during the unrest that toppled premier Sheikh Hasina last week, the country's interim government said in a statement Thursday.

The United Nations said Tuesday their human rights offices in Sanaa had been stormed by Yemen's Houthi rebels, with the U.N.'s rights chief demanding they leave immediately and return all seized assets.

The European Union's top diplomat has said the bloc should consider sanctioning far-right Israeli ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich for comments he said constitute "incitement to war crimes."

Israel's repeated use of heavy bombs in the densely-populated Gaza Strip indicates repeated violations of the laws of war, the U.N. said on Wednesday, highlighting six attacks that killed at least 218 people.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Tuesday that at least 36,550 people have been killed in the territory during nearly eight months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.

U.N. rights chief Volker Turk called Tuesday for an immediate halt to what he called Russia's intensifying "crackdown" on journalists and attacks on free speech.

The United Nations has called for "a clear, transparent and credible investigation" of mass graves uncovered at two major hospitals in war-torn Gaza that were raided by Israeli troops.