Diplomat Volker Türk – Austrian must become UN chief of human rights

The current deputy secretary-general of the UN secretariat would succeed Chilean Michelle Bachelet, who was inactive at the end of her first term in August. Türk worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for over two decades, most recently as a Deputy High Commissioner from 2015 to 2019. The lawyer then moved to the office of UN Secretary-General Guterres.

Doctorate at the University of Vienna
Türk has a PhD in international law from the University of Vienna. He was a research assistant at the Institute of International Law of the University of Linz and the Institute of Criminal Law of the University of Linz. He has numerous publications in the field of international refugee law and human rights.

“Right Hand” by Guterres
As Deputy Secretary-General (also Deputy Secretary-General) for “strategic coordination”, Türk was regarded as Guterres’ “right-hand man”. In that capacity, he replaced a Chilean with Fabrizio Hochschild Drummond. His choice three years ago was based, among other things, on more than 30 years of experience in the field of international protection of refugees and stateless persons and in lobbying and humanitarian work in a broader sense.

The UNHCHR has an office (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights/OHCHR). While the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council is made up of varying state representatives, the OHCHR is made up of experts. The main task of the High Commissioner is to contribute to the implementation of human rights in practice around the world and to respond to serious human rights violations worldwide.

Candidates from Argentina and Senegal
Other candidates to succeed Bachelet included Argentine career diplomat Federico Villegas and Adama Dieng, according to Reuters. The Senegalese previously advised Guterres on genocide prevention.

Phil Lynch, director of the NGO International Service for Human Rights, criticized the lack of transparency and involvement of independent civil society in Turk’s nomination. “The UN Secretary General has missed an important opportunity, legitimacy and authority to build the next High Commissioner,” he said. Guterres usually consults on such a personnel issue with the permanent members of the UN Security Council: the US, France, Great Britain, China and Russia. It was initially not clear whether this also happened in the case of Türk.

Many tasks waiting
The new UNHCHR awaits sensitive tasks – for example, in connection with the war in Ukraine or a report on human rights violations in China’s Xinjiang province, which Bachelet published shortly before midnight on the evening of August 31, ten minutes before the end of her term in office. She had hesitated before that. The report found evidence of crimes against humanity against the Uyghur Muslim community and other minorities.

Hundreds of thousands have been sent to re-education camps in northwestern China’s Xinjiang, according to human rights groups and refugee Uyghurs. Many are said to have been sent to other Chinese provinces for forced labor. “The magnitude of the arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of the Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim groups (…) could constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity,” the Bachelet report states. People were denied fundamental rights from 2017 to 2019 and possibly beyond. What happens next in this case will also depend on the new High Commissioner. In any case, China rejects the allegations and speaks of lies.