The UN human rights chief said Thursday his agency was “in survival mode” due to funding shortfalls, as he launched a $400 million appeal to tackle global rights crises in 2026.

Volker Turk warned countries that at a time when global human rights are under significant assault, his office was facing dire funding shortages hampering its increasingly important and life-saving work.

“Our reporting provides credible information on atrocities and human rights trends at a time when truth is being eroded by disinformation and censorship,” he told diplomats at the UN rights office headquarters in Geneva.

“We are a lifeline for the abused, a megaphone for the silenced, and a steadfast ally to those who risk everything to defend the rights of others.”

In 2025, the UN Human Rights Office’s regular budget — set by the UN General Assembly of member states — was $246 million, but it ultimately received only $191.5 million of that money.

It also sought $500 million in voluntary contributions, of which $257.8 million came in.

Funding for the UN’s human rights work has long been chronically underfunded, but Mr. Turk said: “We are currently in survival mode, delivering under strain.”

“These cuts and reductions untie perpetrators’ hands everywhere, leaving them to do whatever they please. With crises mounting, we cannot afford a human rights system in crisis,” he added.

The UN human rights office lost around 300 out of 2,000 staff last year and had to end or scale back its work in 17 countries.

Its programme in Myanmar, for example, was cut by 60%.

High impact, low cost

This year, the General Assembly approved a regular budget of $224.3 million for human rights.

However with the United Nations facing a liquidity crisis, uncertainty remains over how much Turk’s office will receive.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is among a slew of international organisations hit by a global funding crisis.

The United States was the United Nations’ biggest contributor, but has slashed its funding since President Donald Trump returned to power in January 2025 — while other countries have tightened their belts.

UN chief Antonio Guterres warned last Friday that the world body is on the brink of financial collapse and could run out of cash by July, as he urged countries to pay their dues.

Against this backdrop, Mr. Turk is seeking $400 million in voluntary funding from countries and donors.

He said human rights accounted for a very small slice of overall UN spending but produced “high-impact” results that help to stabilise communities, build trust in institutions and underpin lasting peace.

“The cost of our work is low; the human cost of underinvestment is immeasurable,” he insisted.

In 2025, UN human rights staff working in 87 countries undertook more than 5,000 human rights monitoring missions — down from 11,000 in 2024.

“That means less evidence for both protection and prevention,” said Mr. Turk.

‘Countering secrecy’

Giving examples of his office’s work, Mr. Turk said it supported 67,000 survivors of torture and modern slavery, documented tens of thousands of human rights violations and exposed discrimination in more than 100 countries.

Its monitoring mission in Ukraine is the “only organisation” with a comprehensive record of verified civilian casualties “since the initial Russian invasion in 2014”, he said.

In Bangladesh, its fact-finding mission on the 2024 crackdown “helped establish a comprehensive record of systematic and serious human rights abuses”.

And the probe in the Democratic Republic of Congo “uncovered patterns of grave human rights violations that may amount to crimes against humanity”.

“All this work aims to bring the stories of victims to the world, countering secrecy — the oppressor’s strongest ally — and challenging injustice and impunity,” Mr. Turk said.

Published – February 05, 2026 09:54 pm IST

A Kenyan police officer, part of a UN-backed multinational force, kneels for cover from an exchange of gunfire between gangs and police at a base in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on December 5, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Volker Turk, United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said on Monday (December 9, 2024) that 184 people had been killed over the weekend in the Haitian capital, rocked by a spike in gang violence.

“Just this past weekend, at least 184 people were killed in violence orchestrated by the leader of a powerful gang in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, in the Cite Soleil area,” Volker Turk told reporters in Geneva. “These latest killings bring the death toll just this year in Haiti to a staggering 5,000 people.”

Cite Soleil, a densely populated slum by the port of the capital Port-au-Prince, is among the poorest and most violent areas of Haiti. Tight gang control, including the restriction of mobile phone use, has limited residents’ ability to share information about the massacre.

In October, at least 115 people were massacred in Pont-Sonde, a town in Haiti’s breadbasket Artibonite region, in what the Gran Grif gang said was retaliation for residents working with a self-defence group hindering their road toll operations.

The government, wracked by political infighting, has struggled to contain armed gangs’ growing power in and around the capital.

Haiti violence: At least 3,661 killed this year; six lakh people displaced, says UN

Haitian authorities had in 2022 requested international security support for local police, but the mission — based on voluntary contributions — that the United Nations approved in 2023 has only partially deployed and is severely under-resourced.

Haitian leaders have since called for the mission to be converted into a U.N. peacekeeping force to ensure it is better supplied, but the plan stalled amid opposition from China and Russia in the Security Council.

Volker Turk cited an opinion released by the U.N. top court in July that called Israel’s occupation illegal. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The U.N. human rights chief said on Monday (September 9, 2024) that ending the nearly year-long war in Gaza is a priority and he asked countries to act on what he called Israel’s “blatant disregard” for international law in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Nearly 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to Gaza health officials, since Israel unleashed a military campaign in response to cross-border attacks by Hamas militants on October 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and a further 250 taken hostage. The conflict has also fuelled a surge in violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

“Ending that war and averting a full-blown regional conflict is an absolute and urgent priority,” the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, said in a speech at the start of the five-week U.N. Human Rights Council session in Geneva.

“States must not – cannot – accept blatant disregard for international law, including binding decisions of the (U.N.) Security Council and orders of the International Court of Justice, neither in this nor any other situation.”

He cited an opinion released by the U.N. top court in July that called Israel’s occupation illegal, and Mr. Turk said this situation must be “comprehensively addressed”. Israel has rejected the opinion and called it one-sided.

Mr. Turk’s comments were given in a broad speech marking the mid-way point of his four-year term as U.N. rights chief where he described massive challenges around the world and a crisis of political leadership. The session will also debate crises in Sudan, Afghanistan and Ukraine.

“It seems to me we are at a fork in the road. We can either continue on our current path – a treacherous ‘new normal’ – and sleepwalk into a dystopian future,” he said in a speech met with applause from diplomats.

He denounced the increased use of the death penalty and “alarming regressions” on gender equality, in reference to new morality laws in Afghanistan.

In Western countries like Britain, Germany and the United States, politicians risk spurring violence by scapegoating migrants and minorities during election periods, he said.

Mr. Turk, a former lawyer from Austria, also used the speech to defend his record, after criticism from some that his policy of engaging China over alleged abuses has been too soft.

“I believe in engagement, frank exchanges and keeping dialogue open, even more so in the face of fierce disagreement,” he said.

People, believed to be migrants, stand on a British Border Force vessel as they arrive at Port of Dover, Dover, Britain, January 17, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Two United Nations top officials called on the U.K. to reconsider its plan to transfer asylum seekers to Rwanda on April 23, warning the move would harm human rights and refugee protection.

In a joint statement, Filippo Grandi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, and Volker Turk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, called on the U.K. to take practical measures to address irregular flows of migrants and refugees.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised on April 22 to start sending asylum seekers to Rwanda within 10 to 12 weeks as the upper house of parliament passed legislation that had been delayed for weeks by attempts to alter the plan.

Buildings destroyed by Israeli strikes in Gaza City on October 28, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk warned on October 28 there was the potential for thousands more civilians to die if Israel presses a major ground offensive in Gaza.

Israel’s army relentlessly hammered the territory on October 28 after fierce overnight bombardment that rescuers said destroyed hundreds of buildings three weeks into a war sparked by the deadliest attack in the country’s history.

“Given the manner in which military operations have been conducted until now, in the context of the 56-year-old occupation, I am raising alarm about the possibly catastrophic consequences of large-scale ground operations in Gaza and the potential for thousands more civilians to die,” Turk said.

“There is no safe place in Gaza and there is no way out. I am very worried for my colleagues, as I am for all civilians in Gaza.”

Follow live updates from the Israel-Hamas war on October 28

Israel unleashed its bombing campaign after Hamas gunmen stormed across the Gaza border on October 7, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and seizing more than 220 hostages, according to Israeli officials.

The Health Ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza said Israeli strikes had killed 7,703 people, mainly civilians, including more than 3,500 children.

The U.N. rights chief also condemned the Internet and telecommunications blackout that has hit the Palestinian enclave since Friday.

“Compounding the misery and suffering of civilians, Israeli strikes on telecommunications installations and subsequent Internet shutdown have effectively left Gazans with no way of knowing what is happening across Gaza and cut them off from the outside world,” he said.

“Ambulances and civil defence teams are no longer able to locate the injured, or the thousands of people estimated to be still under the rubble.

“When these hostilities end, those who have survived will face the rubble of their homes and the graves of their family members,” Turk said.

He called on all parties “to do all in their power to de-escalate the conflict”.

The conflict is the fifth and deadliest in Gaza since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Palestinian territory in 2005.

The latest Israeli strikes against Hamas, the Islamist group that has ruled Gaza since 2007, were the most intense since the war broke out. They coincided with ground operations.

“Continued violence is not the answer. I call on all parties as well as third States, in particular those with influence over the parties to the conflict, to do all in their power to de-escalate this conflict,” Turk added.

Furniture piled up on a sofa in a flooded house in Larissa, central Greece on September 11, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Climate change is sparking human rights emergencies in numerous countries, the UN rights chief said on Monday, stressing the need to fight the impunity of those who “plunder our environment”.

Speaking before the United Nations Human Rights Council, Volker Turk pointed to recent examples of the “environmental horror that is our global planetary crisis”.

He described visiting Basra, Iraq, where date palms once lined canals, but now “drought, searing heat, extreme pollution and fast-depleting supplies of fresh water are creating barren landscapes of rubble and dust”.

“This spiralling damage is a human rights emergency for Iraq, and many other countries,” he said in his address opening the 54th council session in Geneva.

“Climate change is pushing millions of people into famine. It is destroying hopes, opportunities, homes and lives. In recent months, urgent warnings have become lethal realities again and again all around the world,” Mr. Turk said.

“We do not need more warnings. The dystopian future is already here. We need urgent action now.”

Mr. Turk was speaking after the G-20 at the weekend failed to commit to a phase-out of fossil fuels, something he said was desperately needed.

At a time when the ravages of climate change are forcing more and more people to leave their homes, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said he was “shocked by the nonchalance” seen towards surging numbers of migrant deaths.

“It is evident that far more migrants and refugees are dying, unnoticed,” he said, pointing to the more than “2,300 people reported dead or missing in the Mediterranean this year, including the loss of more than 600 lives in a single shipwreck off Greece in June.”

He also highlighted migrant deaths in the English Channel, the Bay of Bengal, in the Caribbean, along the U.S.-Mexican border, and at the Saudi border, where he said his “office is seeking urgent clarification about allegations of killings and mistreatment”.

The UN rights chief also highlighted a wide range of other concerning situations around the world, including in Russia, Pakistan and the Palestinian territory.

On China, he reiterated concerns raised in a report by his office a year ago about the situation in the far-western Xinjiang region, which cited possible crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.

“As my Office highlighted a year ago, the concerns in the Xinjiang … requires strong remedial action by the authorities,” Turk said Monday, also voicing concern at “continued detention of human rights advocates”.

Mr. Turk also spoke about the situation in Lebanon, decrying a total lack of accountability for the 2020 Beirut port blast, that killed more than 220 people, urging “an international fact-finding mission to look into human rights violations related to this tragedy.”

And he mentioned the situation in Iran, one year after the death of Mahsa Amini in custody after her arrest for allegedly breaching the strict dress code for women.

Mr. Turk voiced concern at a bill that would impose harsher penalties for breaching the dress code, and “renewed deployment of the morality police.”

Climate change and environmental degradation played a role in a number of the rights situations he mentioned, including in Africa’s Sahel region.

Mr. Turk insisted on the need to “counter the impunity of people and businesses who severely plunder our environment”, welcoming a proposal to recognise “ecocide” as an international crime.

Amid the towering problems facing the world, Mr. Turk decried “politics of deception”.

“Helped by new technologies, lies and disinformation are mass-produced to sow chaos, to confuse, and ultimately to deny reality and ensure no action will be taken that could endanger the interests of entrenched elites,” he said.

“The most apparent case of this is climate change.”