United Nations Human Rights Council in the context of "Minority rights"

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is a department of the United Nations Secretariat that works to promote and protect human rights that are guaranteed under international law and stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. The office was established by the United Nations General Assembly on 20 December 1993 in the wake of the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights.

The office is headed by the high commissioner for human rights, who co-ordinates human rights activities throughout the United Nations System and acts as the secretariat of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. The eighth and current high commissioner is Volker Türk of Austria, who succeeded Michelle Bachelet of Chile on 8 September 2022.

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas (born 31 May 1947) is a Cuban-born American lawyer and writer, active in the field of human rights and international law. From 1 May 2012 to 30 April 2018, he served as the first UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order, appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council.

During the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel occupied the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula. The Sinai Peninsula was returned to full sovereignty of Egypt in 1982 as a result of the Egypt–Israel peace treaty. The United Nations Security Council and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) both describe the West Bank and Western Golan Heights as "occupied territory" under international law, and the Supreme Court of Israel describes them as held "in belligerent occupation", however Israel's government calls the West Bank "disputed" rather than "occupied" and argues that since Israel's unilateral disengagement plan of 2005, it does not militarily occupy the Gaza Strip, a statement rejected by the United Nations Human Rights Council and Human Rights Watch because Israel continues to maintain control of its airspace, waters and most of its borders.

In July 2024, the ICJ concluded that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories violated international law and that Israel should cease settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and end its illegal occupation of these areas and the Gaza Strip as soon as possible.

The UK Home Office hostile environment policy is a set of administrative and legislative measures designed to make staying in the United Kingdom as difficult as possible for people without leave to remain, in the hope that they may "voluntarily leave". The Home Office policy was first announced in 2012 under the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition. The policy was widely seen as being part of a strategy of reducing UK immigration figures to the levels promised in the 2010 Conservative Party Election Manifesto.

The policy has been cited as one of the harshest immigration policies in the history of the United Kingdom, and has been widely criticised as inhumane, ineffective, and unlawful. The United Nations Human Rights Council has stated that the policy has fostered xenophobia within the UK, while the Equality and Human Rights Commission has found that the policy broke equalities law.

Discussions of LGBTQI+ rights at the United Nations have included resolutions and joint statements in the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), attention to the expert-led human rights mechanisms (such as the United Nations Treaty Bodies and Special Procedures), as well as by the UN Agencies.

As of 2025, same-sex marriage is legally performed and recognized in 38 UN member states.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee is a treaty body composed of 18 experts, established by a 1966 human rights treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The Committee meets for three four-week sessions per year to consider the periodic reports submitted by the 173 States parties to the ICCPR on their compliance with the treaty, and any individual petitions concerning the 116 States parties to the ICCPR's First Optional Protocol. The Committee is one of ten UN human rights treaty bodies, each responsible for overseeing the implementation of a particular treaty.

The UN Human Rights Committee should not be confused with the more high-profile UN Human Rights Council (HRC), or the predecessor of the HRC, the UN Commission on Human Rights. Whereas the Human Rights Council (since June 2006) and the Commission on Human Rights (before that date) are UN political bodies: composed of states, established by a UN General Assembly resolution and the UN Charter, and discussing the entire range of human rights concerns; the Human Rights Committee is a UN expert body: composed of persons, established by the ICCPR, and discussing matters pertaining only to that treaty. The Human Rights Committee is often referred to as CCPR (Committee on Civil and Political Rights) in order to avoid that confusion.

The United Nations Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order is a United Nations Independent Expert (also known as Special Rapporteur) appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council under its special procedures mechanism, to report on the thematic field of the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order. The mandate was established by Human Rights Council resolution 18/6 (29 September 2011), chiefly supported by developing countries.

Human rights in the People's Republic of China are poor, as per reviews by international bodies, such as human rights treaty bodies and the United Nations Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC), their supporters, and other proponents claim that existing policies and enforcement measures are sufficient to guard against human rights abuses. However, Western countries, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) including Human Rights in China and Amnesty International, as well as citizens, lawyers, and dissidents inside the country, state that the authorities in mainland China regularly sanction or organize abuses.

Independent NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch regularly present evidence of China violating the freedoms of speech, movement, and religion of its citizens and of others within its jurisdiction. Chinese authorities claim improvement in human rights, as they define them differently, so as to be dependent on "national culture" and the level of development of the country. Chinese politicians have repeatedly maintained that, according to an addition to the Chinese Constitution in 1982, the Four Cardinal Principles supersede citizens' rights. Chinese officials interpret the primacy of the Four Cardinal Principles as a legal basis for the arrest of people who the government says seek to overthrow the principles. Chinese nationals whom authorities perceive to be in compliance with these principles, on the other hand, are permitted by the Chinese authorities to enjoy and exercise all the rights that come with Chinese citizenship, provided they do not violate Chinese laws in any other manner. The Four Cardinal principles include upholding the socialist road, upholding the people's democratic dictatorship, upholding the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), upholding Marxism–Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) was a functional commission within the overall framework of the United Nations from 1946 until it was replaced by the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2006. It was a subsidiary body of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and was also assisted in its work by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNOHCHR).

It was the UN's principal mechanism and international forum concerned with the promotion and protection of human rights. The UNCHR successfully introduced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. The body's reputation became controversial over time, as many observers saw it as highly politicized and vulnerable to outside pressure. Scholars have found that states with a poor human rights record were more likely to be elected to the body than countries with good records.