10 September 2013

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay calls for joint non-military action on Syria

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay noted, while addressing the twenty-fourth regular session of the Human Rights Council, that the international community ‘is late, very late to take serious joint action to halt the downward spiral that has gripped Syria’. Already more than 100,000 people were killed in Syria, 4 million people were displaced within Syrian borders and another 2 million people have sought refuge in states in the region.

Pillay said that ‘This appalling situation cries out for international action, yet a military response or the continued supply of arms risk igniting a regional conflagration, possibly resulting in many more deaths and even more widespread misery’. She stressed that member states must find a way, together with the United Nations, to bring the fighting parties to the negotiating table.

Source: UN News Centre | With ‘no easy exit’ from nightmare in Syria, UN rights chief urges political solution
Source: OHCHR | News | Opening Statement by Ms. Navi Pillay United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights at the Human Rights Council 24th Session

10 April 2011

An “unlikely scenario” that occurred in Ivory Coast… And a case for shared responsibility between the UN and France

In follow-up to Security Council Resolution 1975, and in response to recent attacks against civilians and the United Nations mission, the international forces in Ivory Coast recently launched operations against the Gbagbo camp. The “unusually robust” reaction seems to have been triggered by the attacks by the armed forces loyal to Gbagbo directed against the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) Headquarters. The impartiality of a UN operation directly targeting Gbagbo has been quickly questioned, but it can easily be shown that “the fact that Gbagbo’s troops attacked the UN justifies the punishing response”. These events prompt two questions of international law. (more…)