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Navi Pillay said Tel Aviv's two-week onslaught on Gaza - which has cost more than 650 Palestinians lives - would be thoroughly investigated. Ms Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the attacks have destroyed houses and hospitals and killed civilians. "These are just a few examples where there seems to be a strong possibility that international humanitarian law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes. "Every one of these incidents must be properly and independently investigated." According to Gaza officials, 475 houses have been destroyed and 2,644 damaged, while 46 schools, 56 mosques...

Israel’s air campaign in Gaza may violate international laws prohibiting the targeting of civilians, the U.N.’s top human rights official said Friday. Navi Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said the Israeli military, which claims to have hit more than 1,100 targets that it says are mostly rocket-launching sites, and the Gaza militants, who have fired more than 550 rockets against Israel, must abide by international law. […] Pillay says she’s seen for herself in Gaza how traumatic the airstrikes and rocket attacks are for civilians, particularly children. Her office says civilians bear the brunt of the conflict...

Syrian helicopters bombarded a Damascus suburb on Monday and Turkey scrambled warplanes near the border in the north, as the UN human rights chief warned that arms supplied to both the government and rebels were deepening the 16-month conflict. Fighting has come to the gates of the capital in recent weeks and is also raging throughout the country as the battle to unseat President Bashar al-Assad increasingly takes on the character of an all-out civil war, fuelled by sectarian hatred. Syrian government forces have launched an assault on Douma, a city on the edge of Damascus where they stormed a...

Commentators and officials said Wednesday that the United Nations had cemented its position as a discredited global laughing stock after the UN “Food Envoy” criticized Canada — one of the wealthiest and healthiest nations in the world — for alleged inequality, poverty, and obesity. Critics of the global body and top Canadian policy makers promptly lambasted the organization for wasting scarce taxpayer resources “investigating” the nation and demanding reforms even as millions of people around the world starve. UN “Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food” Olivier De Schutter presented his demands for Canada in a dubious report released Wednesday...

CNSNews.com) – A Florida advocacy group spearheading protests over the racially-charged Trayvon Martin shooting has welcomed the intervention of the United Nations’ human rights chief, who has called for the shooter to be put on trial and “reparations for the victims concerned.” “We believe that the United Nations involvement can help prevent another Trayvon Martin situation in other counties across the world,” J. Willie David, president of the Florida Civil Rights Association, said in a statement provided to CNSNews.com on Monday. “The shooting death of Trayvon Martin and Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law have created a worldwide movement that calls...

WRITTEN BY ALEX NEWMAN MONDAY, 09 APRIL 2012 12:16 As the shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida continues to dominate headlines around the world, United Nations “High Commissioner for Human Rights” Navi Pillay publicly demanded an investigation of the incident and the prosecution of shooter George Zimmerman. She also expressed concerns about the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law that allows would-be victims to defend themselves. Speaking at a press conference in Barbados, Pillay joined the growing chorus of race-profiteers, anti-gun zealots, and supposed “civil rights” activists in attempting to exploit the tragedy. "As High Commissioner for Human Rights, I call...

Today, at the United Nations, the Obama administration is turning its back on Israel. For the very first time, the U.N. Security Council has invited the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights to “brief” the Council specifically on the subject of Israel and the commissioner’s list of trumped-up sins. Though the U.S. is a veto-holding power, the extraordinary move has full American approval, despite the fact that the global soapbox will be handed to Navi Pillay, a notorious anti-Israel partisan. Moreover, the American-backed action exposes President Obama’s profound weakness on the international stage. It turns out that the deal to...

BRIDGETOWN (AFP) - UN rights chief Navi Pillay on Thursday called for an "immediate investigation" into the circumstances surrounding the February death of an unarmed black US teen, shot by a neighborhood watchman. Pillay made the comments about the controversial Trayvon Martin case at a press conference in Barbados, as she wrapped up a three-day visit to the Caribbean island nation. "As High Commissioner for Human Rights, I call for an immediate investigation," Pillay told reporters. "Justice must be done for the victim. It's not just this individual case. It calls into question the delivery of justice in all situations...

After a two-hour meeting in Cairo, Khaled Mashaal, unelected leader of Hamas, and Mahmoud Abbas, unelected leader of the Palestinian Authority, were all smiles. "We want to assure our people and the Arab and Islamic world that we have turned a major new and real page in partnership on everything to do with the Palestinian nation," Mashaal announced. "There are no more differences between us now," agreed Abbas. In other words, the "moderate" Abbas is now a full partner with the leader of an organization whose charter is committed not just to the destruction of Israel but also to the...

United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay has dismissed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's recent claims that the U.N. is not a credible organization and that her commission of inquiry failed to contact his government during an investigation of human rights violations in his country. Earlier this week, U.S. television network ABC aired an interview with President Assad in which he said he had not received documents or evidence to support recent findings by a U.N. commission of inquiry that crimes against humanity have been committed during the on-going crackdown on dissenters. He also questioned the United Nations' credibility. Pillay, who...

In Libya its a case of "meet the new boss; same as the old boss." The UN's top human rights official said Friday that Libya's transitional government must take control of its prisons and prevent further atrocities against detainees. “There's torture, extrajudicial executions, rape of both men and women,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay told the Associated Press. Pillay says she is particularly concerned about sub-Saharan African detainees whom the brigades automatically brand as fighters for the late Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. Pillay, who briefed the UN Security Council about Libya on Wednesday demanded action from the...

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N.’s top human rights official called Friday for an “independent, thorough and credible investigation” into allegations that Sudan’s air force had bombed a refugee camp in South Sudan. “If indeed it is established that an international crime or serious human rights violation has been committed, then those responsible should be brought to justice,” said Navi Pillay, the high commissioner for human rights.

The U.N. Security Council agreed on Friday to France's request for a briefing on Syria's rights crackdown from the U.N. human rights chief, overcoming resistance from Russia, China and Brazil, Western envoys said. Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, president of the Security Council this month, said Navi Pillay's closed-door briefing would probably take place on Monday. He dismissed suggestions from Western envoys that Russia had opposed the briefing, although he acknowledged Moscow and others had reservations. "We expressed a position, a concern, which also some other members of the Security Council had ... that there is a division of labor,"...

GENEVA (AP) — The U.N.'s top human rights official says her office estimates the death toll in Syria's nine-month uprising is now "much more" than 4,000. Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, gave the latest figure a day before the global body is due to hold an emergency meeting on the crisis in the country. Pillay told reporters in Geneva on Thursday that evidence emerging of abuses committed by Syrian security forces affirms her call that the country's leadership should be prosecuted for "crimes against humanity."

Thousands Demonstrate in Maldives Over Islamic Law December 23, 2011 Thousands in the Maldives protested Friday, calling on the government to halt what they called "anti-Islamic" activities, including a plan to allow direct flights to Israel. More moderate supporters of the president rallied as well as debate swells over the future of the state's religion. The Indian Ocean archipelago of 300,000 Muslims prohibits practicing any other faith. The protesters want authorities to stop the sale of alcohol in the islands, shut down brothels operating in the guise of massage parlors and demolish monuments gifted by other countries marking a South...

Rights chief calls situation "intolerable" but Syrian ambassador to UN says country is victim of "huge conspiracy". More than 5,000 people are now believed to have been killed in the Syrian government's crackdown on protests, the United Nations human rights chief has told the UN Security Council. The UN's Navi Pillay said on Monday there were reports of increased attacks by opposition groups on President Bashar al-Assad's security forces but highlighted "alarming" events in the besieged protest city of Homs, according to diplomats in the closed meeting. More than 14,000 people are estimated to have been detained and at least...

But the UN is a serious place, led by serious people, such as UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay, who was seriously concerned a few years ago about the execution of Saddam Hussein. Now she’s upset over the killing of Qaddafi. Apparently the Russian government, with its serious interest in law, is concerned as well.

A bloodied and beaten Moammar Gadhafi asked the fighters who captured him "Do you know right from wrong?" in what could well have been the final words of the ousted Libyan dictator. New video footage emerged Friday showing the former strongman apparently in his last moments, surrounded and pleading for his life, repeatedly telling the mob swarming around him, "What you are doing is forbidden in Islamic law." One of the group is heard responding, "Shut up you dog," as the armed fighters fired celebratory bullets in the air. The footage ends with Gadhafi telling them, "What you are doing...

Israel was concerned Tuesday night that the United Nations would encourage terrorists who are supposed to remain outside Israel and Gaza to return to their families, after UN Human Rights Council head Navi Pillay said that requiring the terrorists to relocate from their original homes was against international law. Pillay said that the Council may interview terrorists to determine whether or not they willingly agreed to leave their original homes. "It was with a sense of great relief that we have received news of the agreement to exchange prisoners. We do however have concerns regarding reports that hundreds of Palestinian...

I don't know how many of you noticed the comments of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and 'Human Rights' Commissioner Navi Pillay on Gilad Shalit's release, but they got some play on Israel Television this evening, because they are quite ludicrous. The United Nations voiced concern on Tuesday that some of the Palestinian detainees released in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit may have not have been given any choice on where to go, which could constitute an illegal forced transfer. The office of Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, welcomed the release but cited reports that some...