IOR 40/9564/2025
17 June 2025
ITEM 2: INTERACTIVE DIALOGUE ON THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE HIGH
COMMISSIONER
HUMAN RIGHTS MUST POINT THE WAY OUT OF OUR CURRENT PERIL
UN Human Rights Council
Fifty-ninth regular session
16 June – 9 July 2025
High Commissioner,
We thank you for your report and update raising alarm across a range of issues, far too many for us
to address now. The trend lines are deeply concerning. As your report notes, “[t]he global
consensus around international norms and institutions continues to face serious threats, with rapid
global changes and upheavals that further decentre human rights and its fundamental
principles.”
We agree with you fully: human rights must point the way out of our current peril. You call for a
“global coalition”. We agree and believe indigenous peoples and civil society must be a strong part
of any such coalition.
We recognize your office’s important activities in Sri Lanka and urge you to use your forthcoming
visit as an opportunity to call on the government to support the work of the Sri Lanka Accountability
Project and heed victims and survivors in their calls for extending its mandate.
We urge your office to strengthen its monitoring and reporting on Ethiopia and elaborate on how
future atrocity crimes could be prevented.
We share your concerns on China, including on Hong Kong and Tibet, and on individual cases of
human rights defenders. This August will mark three years since your office published a report on
Xinjiang concluding that crimes against humanity may have occurred. Despite your engagement
subsequent to the report, and as you stated yesterday, worrying reports of human rights violations
continue to emerge from Xinjiang. We call on you to provide a public update to the report, including
an assessment of the implementation of OHCHR recommendations, prior to the next session of this
Council.
Finally, in light of your office’s independent fact-finding inquiry in Bangladesh, how can this Council
and UN human rights mechanisms support accountability and reforms in this country?
Thank you