The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has warned today that the increase in poverty around the world has worsened the human rights situation and has criticized the asylum policies of countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia.
“Some 300 million people have fallen back into extreme poverty. That is, of course, also a human rights problem, it is not often seen that way,” he told the APA agency in Vienna, where he is to participate in the 30th anniversary of the conference that led to the creation of the High Commissioner.
The expert in asylum policies assured that poverty has also grown in Europe, due to the consequences of the crisis of the covid-19 pandemic and the war due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Turk claimed that human rights should not be a game of “ping pong” within geopolitical disputes” but rather something that affects people’s daily lives.
“When more than 60 hospitals stop working, you see that they don’t really care what happens to people, it’s just the power of two men,” Türk gave as an example, referring to the serious clashes in Sudan between the head of the Sudanese army, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the head of the militia, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
The high commissioner said he would like the debate on migration in Europe to be rational and fact-based and not stray from refugee rights.
Thus, he criticized the UK’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda and said that it is not compatible with human rights, according to APA.
He also said Australia’s migrant detention system is a “policy of cruelty”.
He also criticized Austria’s plans to send immigrants from those countries to Syria and Afghanistan, saying that the human rights situation in those countries is not compatible with forced deportations.
