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volker türk
Demanding Peace Talks, UN Chief Warns Iran War 'Could Spiral Beyond Anyone's Control'
"It is time to stop the fighting and get to serious diplomatic negotiations," said António Guterres. "The stakes could not be higher."
Mar 06, 2026
After nearly a week of bloodshed in President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's war on Iran—which critics argued violates not only the US Constitution but also the United Nations Charter—UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Friday demanded a return to negotiations.
Trump and Netanyahu launched "Operation Epic Fury" just a day after Badr Albusaidi, the foreign minister of Oman and mediator of recent nuclear talks between the United States and Iran, said on a prominent US news program that "we have already achieved quite a substantial progress" and "the peace deal is within our reach."
The Iranian government said Thursday that at least 1,230 people had been killed in Iran. The US-Israeli assault continued on Friday, as Guterres declared that "all the unlawful attacks in the Middle East and beyond are causing tremendous suffering and harm to civilians throughout the region—and pose a grave a risk to the global economy, particularly to the most vulnerable people."
"The situation could spiral beyond anyone's control," Guterres said. "It is time to stop the fighting and get to serious diplomatic negotiations. The stakes could not be higher."
The UN chief's statement came amid reporting from Drop Site News that "US-Israeli missiles have hit an elementary school in Tehran—the fourth school in six days." The first strike, for which no government has taken responsibility but analyses suggest the United States is to blame, killed around 175 people, mostly children, at a girls' school in Minab on Saturday. Then, on Thursday, two boys’ schools southwest of Tehran were bombed.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk also called for all parties "to give peace a chance," highlighting in a Friday statement that the war "has been spreading like wildfire" and caused significant damage in not only Iran and Israel, but "at least a dozen other countries, mostly in the Gulf, with risks of major economic and environmental ramifications across the world."
"The world urgently needs to see steps to contain and extinguish this blaze—but instead we are only seeing more inflammatory, bellicose rhetoric, more bombings, more destruction, killings, and escalation, that fuels it further," he continued. "Confusion has also been sown around international law—and some have openly derided the fundamental values of our common humanity."
While Türk directed his plea for deescalation at the warring governments, he also urged other states "to call clearly on those involved to pull back," arguing that "cool heads must prevail if we are to prevent further terror and devastation for civilians."
"Given the magnitude of this crisis," he said, "I call on heads of state and government around the world unequivocally to commit to defending international human rights law, international humanitarian law, and the UN Charter itself—we cannot afford for more powder kegs to ignite."
"Lebanon is becoming a key flashpoint," Türk noted. "I am extremely concerned and worried about the latest developments following Hezbollah's attacks on Israel and Israel's heavy counterstrikes, as well as its extensive displacement orders that have already forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes. I call for an immediate cessation of hostilities."
More than half a million people have fled their homes in southern Lebanon, and the death toll there this week is estimated to be over 130 people, as Common Dreams reported earlier Friday. Türk has denounced Israel's "blanket, massive displacement orders" in the country that are impacting hundreds and thousands of Lebanese.
As one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the US has veto power in that body. Considering those circumstances, the group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) this week urged the UN General Assembly to formally declare Trump and Netanyahu's assault on Iran a "war of aggression" in violation of the charter.
"No legal framework, international or domestic, can justify this US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran," DAWN executive director Omar Shakir said in a statement. "This war is patently illegal, and it must be stopped."
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UN Leaders Warn Rule of Law Being Replaced by 'Rule of Force'
"We are living in a world where mass suffering is excused away... where humans are used as bargaining chips... where international law is treated as a mere inconvenience," said UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
Feb 23, 2026
The secretary-general of the United Nations and the body's top human rights official did not call out world leaders by name as they warned that "impunity has become a contagion" among powerful governments at the opening of the UN Human Rights Council's annual session in Geneva on Monday.
But their comments appeared to allude to numerous recent actions by the Trump administration, whose officials have explicitly dismissed concerns about international law regarding the White House's foreign policy in recent months.
Secretary-General António Guterres warned global officials that "the rule of law is being out-muscled by the rule of force."
"This assault is not coming from the shadows. Or by surprise. It is happening in plain sight—and often led by those who hold the greatest power," said Guterres.
The leader's comments came nearly two months after President Donald Trump ordered an invasion of Venezuela, killing dozens of people, abducting President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and charging them with narcotics trafficking, and pushing to take control of the South American country's oil supply.
That operation as well as the United States' bombings of dozens of boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean in recent months—also ostensibly to fight "narcoterrorism"—have been violations of international law, according to numerous legal experts, with the former violating the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter.
Trump officials, including Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, however, have claimed the US has the right to use military force against any country if doing so advances US interests.
"We are living in a world where mass suffering is excused away... where humans are used as bargaining chips... where international law is treated as a mere inconvenience," said Guterres on Monday. "Conflicts are multiplying and impunity has become a contagion. That is not due to a lack of knowledge, tools, or institutions. It is the result of political choices."
The UN has directly condemned other policies by the Trump administration in recent weeks, including Trump's executive order threatening tariffs on any country that provides Cuba with oil as it baselessly accused the island nation's communist government of harboring terrorists, and Guterres has suggested Trump's creation of a "Board of Peace" to govern Gaza is akin to "one power calling the shots."
Guterres mentioned just two specific conflicts: Russia's war on Ukraine and the "blatant violations of human rights, human dignity, and international law in the occupied Palestinian territory," where the US-backed Israel Defense Forces have been waging war on Gaza and Israeli settlers have been carrying out increased violent attacks in the West Bank as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government pushes to further illegally annex the territory and make the creation of a Palestinian state impossible.
"The current trajectory is stark, clear, and purposeful: The two-state solution is being stripped away in broad daylight," said Guterres. "The international community cannot allow this to happen."
Regarding Ukraine, which will enter its fifth year of war with Russia on Tuesday and where more than 15,000 civilians have been killed, Guterres said, "It is more than past time to end the bloodshed."
Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, added in his own remarks that "domination and supremacy are making a comeback."
"A fierce competition for power, control, and resources is playing out on the world stage at a rate and intensity unseen for the past 80 years," said Türk. "The use of force to resolve disputes between and within countries is becoming normalized."
Türk highlighted how "the gears of global power are shifting", calling for people to band together to protect rights and create "a strong counterbalance to the top-down, autocratic trends we see today".
Some world leaders, he said, are operating as though "they are above the law, and above the UN Charter."
"They claim exceptional status, exceptional danger, or exceptional moral judgement to pursue their own agenda at any cost," he said. "They spread disinformation to distract, silence, and marginalize."
Türk also warned that some leaders appear to "weaponize their economic leverage"—an apparent reference to Trump's decision to drastically cut foreign aid funding and withdraw from dozens of UN organizations last month, putting the international body at risk of "imminent financial collapse," as Guterres said at the time.
"Humanitarian needs are exploding while funding collapses," said Guterres on Monday. "Inequalities are widening at staggering speed. Countries are drowning in debt and despair. Climate chaos is accelerating... Across every front, those who are already vulnerable are being pushed further to the margins. And human rights defenders are among the first to be silenced when they try to warn us."
"In this coordinated offensive, human rights are the first casualty," he added, urging world leaders to "not let power write a new rulebook in which the vulnerable have no rights and the powerful have no limits."
"Let this be the place that helps end the broad and brutal assault on human rights," said Guterres. "Because a world that protects human rights protects itself."
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UN Human Rights Chief Calls for End of Trump Oil Embargo on Cuba as Crisis Deepens
The demand came after a group of United Nations experts condemned the embargo as "a serious violation of international law and a grave threat to a democratic and equitable international order."
Feb 13, 2026
The United Nations' human rights chief on Friday called on the Trump administration to lift its oil embargo against Cuba as the humanitarian crisis on the island deepens, with fuel shortages disrupting critical functions on the island and food and medicine shortages leaving families desperate for relief.
Marta Hurtado, a spokesperson for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, said in a statement that "we are extremely worried about Cuba’s deepening socio-economic crisis—amid a decades-long financial and trade embargo, extreme weather events, and the recent US measures restricting oil shipments."
"This is having an increasingly severe impact on the human rights of people in Cuba," Hurtado said. "Given the dependence of health, food, and water systems on imported fossil fuels, the current oil scarcity has put the availability of essential services at risk nationwide. Intensive care units and emergency rooms are compromised, as are the production, delivery, and storage of vaccines, blood products, and other temperature-sensitive medications."
The spokesperson noted that more than 80% of Cuba's water-pumping equipment depends on electricity, which has been undermined by widespread power cuts stemming from fuel shortages.
"The fuel shortage has disrupted the rationing system and the regulated basic food basket, and has affected social protection networks—school feeding, maternity homes, and nursing homes—with the most vulnerable groups being disproportionately impacted," said Hurtado. "Access to essential goods and services, including food, water, medicine, and adequate fuel and electricity, should always be safeguarded, as they are fundamental in modern societies to the right to life and the ability to enjoy many other rights."
In the face of the growing humanitarian catastrophe, Turk "reiterates his call on all states to lift unilateral sectoral measures, given their broad and indiscriminate impact on the population," Hurtado said.
"Policy goals cannot justify actions that in themselves violate human rights," she added.
The US has been economically suffocating Cuba for decades, but the Trump administration intensified the assault last month by cutting the island off from its primary source of oil—Venezuela—and threatening to slap tariffs on countries that send fuel to the beleaguered Caribbean nation, which has long been in the crosshairs of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other right-wing supporters of regime change.
"Cuba is ready to fall," US President Donald Trump declared in early January after his administration kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
In a statement on Thursday, a group of UN human rights experts said that Trump's January 29 executive order imposing a fuel blockade on Cuba represents "a serious violation of international law and a grave threat to a democratic and equitable international order."
“It is an extreme form of unilateral economic coercion with extraterritorial effects, through which the United States seeks to exert coercion on the sovereign state of Cuba and compel other sovereign third States to alter their lawful commercial relations, under threat of punitive trade measures,” the experts said. "A democratic international order cannot be reconciled with practices whereby one State claims the authority to dictate the internal policies and economic relations of others through threats and coercion."
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