Peter Splinter

Peter Splinter is an independent human-rights consultant. He represented Amnesty International to the United Nations in Geneva from 2004 to 2016. In that role, he was closely involved in the establishment and operation of the Human Rights Council.

WORLDVIEWS

The UN Human Rights Council Dithers While the Earth Burns

Peter Splinter

• October 5, 2021

GENEVA — It is time for the United Nations Human Rights Council to take climate change much more seriously than it has been and to treat the issue with the urgency, deliberation and action that it demands. The Council has the tools to do so, and it should use them now. The recent Intergovernmental Panel …

Climate and Environment, Human Rights, WORLDVIEWS

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WORLDVIEWS

Advice for America’s Return to the Human Rights Council, Starting With the Issue of Racism

Peter Splinter

• March 17, 2021

GENEVA — The United States’ decision to re-engage with the United Nations Human Rights Council, announced last month, has been welcomed in many quarters. The news offered a sense of the priorities the US would have in returning to the Council under the Biden administration, after the country left the body in 2018. Now …

Africa, Human Rights, US-UN Relations, WORLDVIEWS

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WORLDVIEWS

Will the Human Rights Council’s Rare Steps to Combat Racism Make a Difference?

Peter Splinter

• July 29, 2020

GENEVA — In early June, some family members of victims of police killings in the United States and more than 600 civil society organizations worldwide wrote to the United Nations Human Rights Council to request that it urgently hold a special session on the US. They did so in reaction to the grave human-rights crisis …

Human Rights, WORLDVIEWS

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WORLDVIEWS

It’s All Clean Slates for the Next Human Rights Council Vote

Peter Splinter

• October 8, 2018

GENEVA — The annual ritual of holding elections for vacant seats on the United Nations Human Rights Council for a three-year term is set for Oct. 12. All five regional groups have clean slates: the number of candidates is equal to the number of open seats. Notwithstanding talk about the need to improve the …