Opinion: Why the U.N. chief’s silence on human rights is deeply troubling
U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres at a news conference about climate change in New York on March 28. By Kenneth Roth April 24 at 5:14 PM Kenneth Roth is executive director of Human Rights Watch.
He set the tone early in his tenure, which corresponded with President Trump’s inauguration. Guterres criticized Trump’s “Muslim ban” only after many other governments had condemned it — and then without mentioning Trump. Guterres has also repeatedly declined to exercise his authority to establish fact-finding missions into egregious rights violations, such as Saudi Arabia’s murder of Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, the use of chemical weapons in Syria, and the murder of two U.N. sanctions monitors in Congo.
But for most rights issues, the dominant sound coming from the 38th floor of U.N. headquarters has been silence. Peace talks for Syria have been on and off again for years. But if Guterres remains silent about the government’s responsibility for the vast majority of atrocities that are at the heart of the conflict, it will only make peace more elusive.
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