The UN human rights chief on Monday said ending the war in Gaza and averting a full-blown regional conflict is an "absolute and urgent priority."

Volker Turk's remarks came at the opening session of the 57th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

"Equally, the wider situation of illegality across the Occupied Palestinian Territory deriving from Israel’s policies and practices, as so clearly spelt out by the International Court of Justice in its advisory opinion in July, must be comprehensively addressed," Turk said.

"States must not and cannot accept blatant disregard for international law, including binding decisions of the Security Council and orders of the International Court of Justice, neither in this nor any other situation," he urged.

Stressing that Palestinians struggle to survive each day, he said nearly 1.9 million people have been forcibly displaced across the strip, many multiple times.

"While the actual number is likely higher, almost 10,000 Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons or ad hoc military facilities, many arbitrarily, with over 50 people having died due to inhumane conditions and ill-treatment," he said, adding that 101 Israeli hostages are still believed to be held in Gaza.

He warned that "deadly and destructive" operations in the West Bank are at a scale "not witnessed in the last two decades," and they are "worsening a calamitous situation" which is already aggravated by settler violence.

Israel has continued a devastating military offensive in the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack that claimed 1,200 lives and around 250 others were taken as hostages.

Nearly 41,000 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins and most of the population is homeless and in need of aid.

Erasure of women from public in Afghanistan

He warned that "the shadow of patriarchy still looms large" as "alarming" regressions on gender equality issues continue worldwide.

"At their most extreme, for example, in Afghanistan, despicable laws and policies are effectively erasing women from public life," he said.

He lamented that "hate and subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, misogyny online and offline are almost normalized."

Women experience higher poverty rates than men in most parts of the world, while gender-based violence, including intimate partner violence, is "devastatingly" frequent and remains largely hidden, he said.

"Justice for victims and prevention efforts are woefully inadequate, in stark contradiction with the promise that 'all human beings are born free and equal," he added.

Discrimination

Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance continue to have a significant impact on societies around the world, Turk said.

These issues are often perpetuated by several factors, he said, including "entrenched power structures, vested interests, institutional inertia and harmful stereotypes, often rooted in legacies of colonialism and enslavement."

"Then there are those politicians, amplified by some media outlets, who scapegoat migrants, refugees, and minorities, as we have seen, for example, around electoral periods in Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, to name a few," he said. "They capitalize on anxiety and despair, pitting one group against the other, and they seek to distract and divide."

He also mentioned the violence directed at the UN staff and humanitarian workers, calling the detention of UN staff in Yemen "outrageous."

The "UN staff and humanitarian workers must never be targeted," he urged.

The six human rights staffers — one woman and five men — were arrested on June 6 together with seven other UN personnel.

"In every region around the world, we see deep-seated power dynamics at play to grab or hold on to power at the expense of universal human rights," Turk said.