To address the biggest human rights challenges humanity is currently facing in 2024 and in the future, UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk made an appeal for USD 500 million during his presentation of the 2024 Annual Appeal in Geneva, Switzerland.

Türk said the funding will help strengthen the effectiveness of his Office to address these challenges, provide solutions and improve people’s lives.

“We are living in profoundly divided times,” Türk said. “Conflict continues to spiral in many parts of the world, most recently in the Middle East. These wars are etching deep scars — breeding grievances that, without justice, will greatly harm the future of entire nations, driving more polarization and creating deeper fractures.”

While the challenges and hardships continue, Türk said in 2023, 1,962 staff members working in 91 countries and at headquarters made great achievements in advancing human rights including helping to secure the release of 13,476 detainees, undertaking 3,644 human rights monitoring missions and monitoring at least 1,088 trials, and contributing to an estimated 43 countries improving their legislation or policy in line with international human rights standards.

In 2023, UN Human Rights received USD 283.2 million in voluntary contributions from 96 donors. Türk said his Office is still falling drastically short of the funding needed to provide human rights solutions. He also highlighted the serious liquidity crisis that the UN is facing and the dire financial situation of the regular budget operations.

“To enable my Office to deliver effectively on its extensive mandate, we need predictable, flexible and sustainable funding,” he said.

After calling last year’s Human Rights 75 Initiative (HR75) a year of collective reflection, a renewed commitment to reclaim our rights and freedoms, Türk said his Office delivered on its promise to make concrete progress to advance human rights in 2023 by receiving almost 800 pledges to take action on rights from Member States, civil society, UN entities and the private sector.

Nearly eighty percent of the world’s nations made commitments on rights issues ranging from women’s rights and gender equality to climate, the rights of people with disabilities, of children and young people, he added.

“But we must maintain this momentum for change,” Türk said. “We must resolve to put rights at the centre of all policies and decisions and governance. To embrace all rights — giving as much weight to economic, social and cultural rights as we do to civil and political rights. To eliminate impunity. And to end once and for all the cycles of injustice and inequality that have defined our societies far too long.”