Who is Volker Türk? Guterres picks confidante for human rights chief

If you’ve never heard of the new United Nations high commissioner for human rights, you may be forgiven; few outside the corridors of the organization’s New York or Geneva headquarters would recognize him if they bumped into him on the sidewalk.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres proposed Volker Türk, a senior U.N. political adviser from Austria with little name recognition outside the tight diplomatic bubble, as the next high commissioner, according to a note by Guterres to governments.

Türk, a close, trusted confidant of Guterres, beat out a field of about a dozen potential candidates from Europe, Asia, and Africa for the top U.N. human rights job. The Biden administration, which has not formally backed any candidate in the race, has generally responded favorably to Türk. “We like him,” said one U.S. official.

Guterres formally proposed Türk for the top U.N. job on Wednesday in a note to the U.N. General Assembly, which subsequently endorsed his appointment.

In turning to a relatively unknown U.N. insider, Guterres has departed from the tradition of appointing famous former world leaders such as Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s ex-president who stepped down from the post on Aug. 31, or legal pioneers such as the former Canadian jurist and International Criminal Court prosecutor Louise Arbour. Instead, he selected a trusted aide who shares his view on the role of human rights advocacy — one that potentially focuses less exclusively on political rights while giving greater weight to the inequality crisis, global warming injustices, and endemic poverty.

The appointment of the human rights high commissioner, first established in 1993, is one of the secretary-general’s most important and politically sensitive personnel decisions.

Previous high commissioners, like Arbour and former Irish President Mary Robinson, clashed with big powers over everything from the U.S. application of torture in its war on terrorism to the forced internment of more than a million Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Türk’s ascendance as a candidate for the world’s most visible human rights job has been received coolly by some human rights groups and other civil society organizations which say he either lacks a robust track record as a human rights advocate or the standing of previous high commissioners.

Some rights advocates privately voiced concern that Guterres’ promotion of a close adviser may suggest he wants his own imprint on the U.N.’s human rights work, or at least to exercise greater control over a highly sensitive political post that often puts the U.N. in the crosshairs of powerful member states such as China, Russia, and the United States.

“Is this the best we can do?” asked one human rights advocate, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid offending the U.N.'s likely next human rights chief. “Why not a Merkel or Michelle Obama,” the advocate said, referring to Germany’s former chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the former U.S. first lady.

Kenneth Roth, who stepped down last week as executive director of Human Rights Watch, declined to comment on Türk. But Roth, who sparred frequently with Guterres and Bachelet over what he saw as their timidity in responding to China’s well-documented rights abuses, said that any credible high commissioner for human rights should have “demonstrated the ability to criticize powerful governments and comfortably take the heat when they get criticized in return.”

“The only criteria for a high commissioner is someone who in a principled way is willing to investigate and condemn serious abuses by governments regardless of how powerful they are. Period. And this pretense that we want to keep doors open for dialogue is just a diversion that is playing the abusers game,” he said in a phone interview.

Diplomats in Washington and New York described Türk as an approachable but discrete U.N. insider, a relatively safe appointment for a secretary-general who favors quiet over megaphone diplomacy and placed a premium on avoiding public confrontations.

But some have doubts about whether he has the best resume for the job.

“He is highly thought of and thought to be brilliant,” one U.N.-based diplomat said in a phone interview. Still, “it's a very weak appointment from the secretary-general to choose someone who is unknown. I would question whether he has the moral and political weight. It's called the high commissioner for a reason.”

‘Now is the time of monsters’

In a U.N. career spanning more than 30 years, Türk has built a reputation as an in-house intellectual, a key architect of Guterres’ refugee and human rights policies, who likes to quote  Greek philosophers such as Plato and 20th-century European intellectuals such as French jurist Georges Scelle. But he has also drawn inspiration from the global south, citing the Indian economist and philosopher Amartya Sen.

Türk once quoted the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, a communist intellectual who was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini’s fascist government, to draw parallels between fascism in Europe during the early 20th century and the rise of populism, nationalism, and xenophobia today. “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters,” he quoted Gramsci.

“He is genuinely an exceptionally smart guy, and I think has genuinely been responsible for bringing some intellectual focus to the secretary-general’s office,” said Richard Gowan, the U.N. director for the International Crisis Group, in a phone interview. “So, the big question about Volker is what is his conception of human rights. He has a genuine interest in advancing social and economic rights, and he is not going to necessarily be focusing solely on political rights.”

Türk has served as Guterres´ top adviser and confidante for decades. In 2019, he followed him to New York, where he served as assistant secretary-general for strategic coordination in the U.N. chief’s executive office. Türk has developed a close relationship with Guterres, previously the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, who recruited Türk to act as his one-man in-house think tank. In January, Türk was promoted to under-secretary-general for policy in the SG’s office. In an apparent effort to raise his public profile, Türk joined Twitter in March, firing out tweets on human rights issues and denouncing Myanmar’s military junta.

Türk’s supporters maintain his relationship with the U.N. chief is an asset. They point out that human rights has been at the core of the former academic’s work since he began working with the U.N. Refugee Agency some 30 years ago, rising to the position of assistant high commissioner for protection, a job that is responsible for ensuring the rights of nearly 30 million refugees around the world.

In that role, they note, Türk demonstrated a willingness to stand up to powerful governments, recalling that he challenged European government policy to return asylum seekers to the first European country they entered on their trek to the continent. He also played a key role in the development of the Global Compact of Refugees.

“Volker Türk brings to the post a wealth of experience in the human rights field,” Stephane Dujarric, the chief spokesperson for the secretary-general, told Devex in emailed remarks. During his tenure in New York, Dujarric noted, Türk has coordinated the global organization’s “interconnected challenges on foundations of trust, solidarity and human rights.” At the U.N. refugee agency, he added, Türk “focused on defending the rights of men, women and children seeking protection as refugees.”

Simon Adams, CEO at the Center for Victims of Torture, said Volker was highly regarded by independent refugee outfits. “He was seen as being a little braver than your average U.N. diplomat, less prone to U.N. speak and more willing to work with NGOs and try to push the refugee and human rights agenda forward,” he said.

When Türk arrived in New York as special adviser to Guterres, he participated in monthly meetings with human rights advocates and other U.N.-based NGOs.

“He set up real meetings, not for the airing of grievances, but for an exchange of ideas,” Adams recalled. “People would challenge him and challenge the SG’s record. … That really impressed me. It’s not easy, but this is someone who wanted to listen and learn,” he added.

Other participants viewed things differently. “There was no attempt to get feedback,” one  advocate said. “It was to transmit messages to the NGO community, not to engage.”

Calls to take on China

The challenge for Türk is to demonstrate that he has the independence to buck his long-time boss and chart his own path. Guterres is deeply skeptical about the virtues of naming and shaming countries for human rights abuses, preferring to privately chide abusive governments into observing their citizens' rights.

The approach has brought criticism from human rights advocates, who fault him for failing to call out current and former world leaders from former U.S. President Donald Trump to Chinese President Xi Jinping for abusive policies on refugees and Muslim minorities.

Türk spearheaded the U.N. chief’s human rights initiative, dubbed the Call to Action for Human Rights, which envisions a far expanded definition of human rights, including promoting sustainable development, gender equality, justice for victims of climate change, and other “new frontiers” in the human rights field. 

Critics of the approach worry it has diluted the U.N.’s focus on traditional abuses of civil and political rights, which have come under increasing attack by authoritarian governments like China and Russia.

The initiative calls for more focus on issues such as economic inequality, justice for the most vulnerable victims of global warming, the U.N.’s sustainable development goals, and the promotion of gender and women’s rights. It also aligns the U.N. more closely to China, which has sought to focus human rights advocacy away from political and civil rights and toward achievements in development, where it has a better story to tell, having lifted millions of Chinese citizens from abject poverty.

But even before Türk begins his new assignment, he faces pressure to confront China directly — which is the subject of a withering U.N. report claiming its “arbitrary and discriminatory detention” of ethnic Uighurs may constitute crimes against humanity.

In a statement released Thursday, Human Rights Watch urged Türk to promote the establishment of a U.N. investigation into China’s abuses of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. At the same time, the rights outfit prodded him to speak out publicly about abuses by other governments, including the U.S. and its allies.

“What’s needed by the millions of people around the world whose rights are being violated every day is an advocate in their corner who will take on abusive governments large and small without fear and without hesitation,” the rights watchdog’s interim Executive Director Tirana Hassan said in a statement.   

One rights advocate said that Türk, like Guterres, sees himself as a political pragmatist, carefully weighing the virtue of confronting the powerful versus achieving tangible political results during his tenure at the U.N. refugee agency.

“I think he believes that human rights can be sacrificed to the greater good of making peace,” said the rights advocate. “If we don’t have a human rights chief that is going to defend us with every fiber in their body then we are in trouble.”

Türk once suggested that human rights would sometimes have to take a back seat to other urgent concerns, including the delivery of life-saving humanitarian relief.

“We cannot deliver humanitarian assistance while also conducting investigations into violations of human rights or humanitarian law, notably in active conflict situations,” Turk said in his final address as assistant high commissioner at the standing committee in June 2019. “This invariably would compromise our access to communities in need and put humanitarian personnel at risk.”

Dujarric, the U.N. spokesperson, countered that those remarks should be viewed in light of the fact that Türk was serving as a top refugee official and “responsible for the protection of humanitarian staff.” In his new job, “Türk will, of course, prioritize the promotion of human rights and justice for victims.”

Update, Sept. 9, 2022: This article has been updated to reflect that Türk’s appointment was approved by the U.N. General Assembly.