U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein warns the rise of extreme nationalism is threatening global peace and security. Zeid spoke at the opening of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s three-week session in Geneva.

Delegates attending the U.N. Human Rights Council’s 38th session gave Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein a standing ovation as he finished his last speech before he leaves his post at the end of August.

The end of his mandate seemingly freed the rights chief to be even more outspoken than usual.

Zeid particularly deplored the rise of extreme nationalism promoted by what he described as self-serving, callous leaders.

“Only by pursuing the opposite to nationalism – only when states all work for each other, for everyone, for all people, for the human rights of all people – can peace be attainable…. For only by speaking out can we begin to combat the growing menace of chauvinistic nationalism that stalks our future.”  

Zeid expressed deep concern about recently adopted migration policies by the United States in which children are forcibly separated from parents who cross into the U.S. illegally. He said the policies punish children for their parents’ actions.

“The American Association of Pediatrics has called this cruel practice government-sanctioned child abuse, which may cause irreparable harm, with lifelong consequences. The thought that any state would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable,” Zeid said.

The high commissioner condemned human rights abuses by the governments of Syria, Myanmar, Venezuela and Nicaragua, and singled out the human rights situations of several African countries, including Burundi, Cameroon, Egypt, and Rwanda.

He expressed deep concern about South Sudan, where a pattern of rapes and killings by government forces in Unity State has been taking place since April.

“Human rights officers have documented the rape of children as young as four years old, and numerous cases of women, elderly people and others being hanged or burned alive in what appears to be a deliberate scorched-earth policy.”  

Zeid also criticized Israeli violations in the occupied Palestinian territories. The United States reportedly is planning to quit the council because of what it sees as bias against Israel.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who also addressed the session, agreed with this U.S. assessment.

“We share the view that a dedicated agenda item focused solely on Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories is disproportionate and damaging to the cause of peace and unless things change, we shall move next year to vote against all resolutions introduced under Item 7,” Johnson said.

Agenda Item 7 is a permanent fixture on the council’s agenda, dealing with Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

Johnson then switched to the main focus of his speech, which was to urge all countries to promote girls’ education as the best way of achieving sustainable development.

He called it a disgrace that 130 million girls worldwide do not get an education and denounced fanatics who fight to stop girls from going to school.

“A group of numbskulls called Boko Haram, who raid schools, abduct children, inflict any atrocity in order to deny girls an education.… When I visited Borno State last year, I met girls who had been told they would be shot if they dared learn to read as the Taliban shot Malala,” he said.  

Johnson was referring to the attempted assassination in 2012 of Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai, who had been advocating for the rights of girls to have an education.
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A pop-up “Corruption Park” has opened in Ukraine to highlight the scale of the problem with interactive exhibits and displays of ill-gotten gains including a $46,000 crystal falcon.

One of the first things visitors see in the EU-funded show is a tent shaped like the gold loaf of bread found in the house of ex-president Viktor Yanukovych after he fled Ukraine in 2014.

Elsewhere, they can inspect a $300,000, limited-edition BMW seized from a corrupt official, and a copy of a 8-million-euro chandelier that, the display says, could have paid for a family’s electricity bill for 64,000 years.

In another tent, visitors lie back in a four-poster bed and watch a multimedia film of the imagined nightmares of a guilty government functionary.

The EU Anti-Corruption Initiative, which staged the show in Kiev’s botanical gardens, said it was meant to show the scale of corruption in Ukraine, and what it costs governments and citizens.

Ukraine’s Western-backed government has accused Yanukovych and his pro-Russian administration of widespread abuses and excesses.

But activists have also accused the current authorities of failing to crack down on graft, which is estimated to cost the country about 2 percent of its economic growth, according to the International Monetary Fund.

“For the kids, it’s a good example and revealing about the scale it all happens at,” Kyiv resident Lyuba said, as she queued with her children to don goggles and join a virtual reality anti-corruption investigation.

‘Corruption has taken so much’

The chandelier appears in a mock-up of an official’s room, decked out with the fruits of his corruption.

Other exhibits explain different schemes used for illegal enrichment.

“Corruption concerns everyone. This is one of the main ideas and goals of the project – to explain the direct relation between top level corruption and ordinary Ukrainians,” said Volodymyr Solohub, spokesman for the EU Anti-Corruption Initiative, which paid for the 140,000 euro ($162,000) park.

“A lot of people just come out disappointed that corruption has taken so much from the country,” he said.

One tent called ‘The Fight’ explains what the current authorities have done to combat graft, including the establishment of anti-corruption agencies.

Depicting the various government bodies as pieces in a puzzle, the exhibit illustrates that there is one missing piece: an independent court dedicated to prosecuting corruption cases, whose creation has been repeatedly pushed back.

Earlier in June, parliament voted to establish the court, but activists have said the law contains an amendment that would undermine the court’s effectiveness and Ukraine’s commitments to external backers such as the International Monetary Fund.

 
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The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) says thousands of migrants trekking through the Balkans are “in desperate need of basic humanitarian services and support.”

IFRC said Monday, “More than 5,600 people have reached Bosnia and Herzegovina since the beginning of January, compared with just 754 across the whole of 2017.”

“We are concerned that people are not receiving the assistance they need,” said Simon Missiri, IFRC regional director for Europe. “People are keen to keep moving and are reluctant to access state services for fear of being detained.”

Missiri said, “Red Cross Societies in the Balkans are doing what they can to reach and help people migrating through their territories, but the scale and complexity of this operation is such that more assistance is needed.”

The Red Cross said 100 of its volunteers in northwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina are serving hundreds of hot meals everyday at an abandoned university campus where they are also distributing sleeping bags, clothes and hygiene kits and are providing medical assistance to people who have been “sleeping in the open.”

Bosnia and Herzegovina, the statement says, “is the most mine contaminated country in Europe” and “some mine fields are still active in the areas where people are trying to cross the border.” Red Cross volunteers are distributing flyers to warn the migrants about the danger.

“These people are extremely vulnerable,” said Missouri. “Regardless of their migration status, they, like everyone, should be able to access basic services, and should be protected from harm.”

 
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With the World Cup in full swing, fans from across the globe are arriving in Russia, many visiting for the first time, after long journeys from South America, Africa and Asia. Many Russians say the fans have already transformed their home cities. Henry Ridgwell reports from Red Square in Moscow.
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One of U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawyers said Sunday he is advising him to not pardon anyone linked to the year-long investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election because it would “just cloud” the perception that there was wrong-doing.  

Rudy Giuliani, a former New York mayor and part of Trump’s legal team, told CNN, “You’re not going to get a pardon because you’re involved” in the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. But he said that in the months to come pardons were “certainly not excluded” if Trump concluded “you’ve been treated unfairly.”

“The president has issued no pardons in this investigation,” Giuliani said. “The president is not going to issue pardons in this investigation.”

“And my advice to him, as long as I’m his lawyer, is not to do it,” he said. “Because you just cloud what is becoming now a very clear picture of an extremely unfair investigation with no criminality involved of any kind. I want that to come out loud and clear and not get clouded by anybody being fired or anybody being pardoned.”

Trump has pardoned several conservative icons in recent weeks, but Giuliani said no one being investigated by Mueller “should rely on it.”

Even so, he said, “When it’s over, hey, he’s the president of the United States. He retains his pardon power. Nobody’s taking that away from him. He can pardon in his judgment based on the Justice Department, counsel’s office, not me. I’m out of it. And I shouldn’t be involved in that process because I’m probably too rooted in his defense, but I couldn’t and I don’t want to take prerogatives away from him.“

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was jailed last week, prompting new questions whether Trump might pardon him. Manafort is accused of witness tampering in a criminal case that stems from his lobbying efforts for Ukraine years before he was a top Trump aide for nearly five months during the 2016 campaign.

Trump attacked Manafort’s jailing, saying on Twitter, “Wow, what a tough sentence for Paul Manafort …. Didn’t know Manafort was the head of the Mob…. Very unfair!”

There is no indication when Mueller’s investigation might end. He is probing whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russian interests to help him win and whether Trump obstructed justice by firing former Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey when he was leading the agency’s Russia investigation before Mueller, over Trump’s objections, was appointed to take over the probe.

In a new broadside against the investigation, Trump tweeted, “WITCH HUNT! There was no Russian Collusion. Oh, I see, there was no Russian Collusion, so now they look for obstruction on the no Russian Collusion. The phony Russian Collusion was a made up Hoax. Too bad they didn’t look at Crooked Hillary like this. Double Standard!” His reference to “Crooked Hillary” is his oft-repeated pejorative for his 2016 challenger, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Giuliani called for investigation of the origins of the Mueller investigation, contending it was “premised on Comey’s illegally leaked memo” about the FBI’s director’s private conversations with Trump.

“There’s a lot of unfairness out there, but we don’t know the scope of it,” Giuliani said.

 
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A woman crying “Allahu akbar” — “God is great” in Arabic — injured two people with a box cutter Sunday at a supermarket in southern France before she was detained.

A customer in the store in the maritime town of La Seyne-sur-Mer was injured in the chest and hospitalized. A woman working the cash register was hurt less seriously, French radio station Europe 1 quoted the prosecutor in nearby Toulon as saying.

Prosecutor Bernard Marchal said the suspect may have mental health problems. She has not been identified. Police were searching her home.

“It’s apparently an isolated case involving a person with psychiatric issues,” the prosecutor told Le Monde newspaper quoted the prosecutor as saying. However, that does not exclude the possibility that the suspect was radicalized, Marchal added.

“There is a presumption of attempted murder and … of a crime with terrorist implications,” Marchal was quoted as saying.

Regional newspaper Nice-Matin, which first reported the 10:30 a.m. attack, quoted an unidentified witness as saying that people in the store stopped the woman from cutting anyone else.

A sense of edginess has been with France since a murderous series of killings in 2015 in the name of the Islamic State group. Adding to concerns are the hundreds of French who have traveled to the Iraq-Syria war zone, or are returning as IS crumbles.

In March, an hours-long attack and hostage-taking in a supermarket near the southern French town of Carcassonne left four people dead. A man attacked people near the Paris Opera house in May, killing one person and injuring four, an action claimed by the Islamic State

Last week, a man who took hostages in a Paris building was hospitalized in a psychiatric unit.

 
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A deep rift over migration policy between Angela Merkel and a rebellious interior minister is threatening to upend the German chancellor’s fragile governing alliance formed earlier this year after weeks of laborious talks.

The German chancellor’s 13-year rule will be on the line in the event Horst Seehofer, a member of the Bavaria-based Christian Social Union, a junior partner in the coalition government, defies Merkel by ordering border guards to turn back migrants arriving Monday at German borders.

Neither the chancellor nor minister appeared Sunday to be in any mood to compromise. Seehofer blamed the chancellor in remarks to German newspapers for the crisis, saying it is a consequence of her 2015 decision to adopt an “open border” policy that has allowed more than a million migrants and refugees to enter Germany.

CSU’s top official in Bavaria, Markus Soder, tweeted: “We must finally secure our borders effectively. This, of course, includes rejection. Asylum tourism must be terminated.”

Analysts say Merkel would likely have no choice but to fire Seehofer for his open revolt against her if he goes ahead with his threat to shutter the border for migrants, collapsing the coalition as a consequence and triggering likely elections.

Merkel fears an abrupt shutting out of asylum-seekers by Germany will prompt other EU countries to follow suit, imperiling an orderly negotiated EU-wide deal. The stakes are high not only for her, but also for the bloc as it searches to craft a migration policy all its fractious states can agree to, and for the CSU, which faces elections in October in its home region of Bavaria and fears the rising support for the far-right AfD party.

In her weekly podcast, Merkel acknowledged the need for changes, but said, “This is a European challenge that also needs a European solution. And I view this issue as decisive for keeping Europe together.”

At the moment the member states are anything but united over migration, and in the words of British commentator and historian Niall Ferguson, the EU melting pot is at risk of melting down.

The German crisis is playing against the backdrop of drama in the Mediterranean, where Rome is refusing to allow NGO ships carrying migrants rescued at sea to dock at Italian ports. It comes as the nationalist populist-led governments of Italy, Austria and Hungary are negotiating what they are terming an “axis of the willing,” an alliance of anti-migration member states that will adopt a hard collective line on asylum-seekers in order to provoke a confrontation with EU leaders later this month.

In 2016, 2.4 million migrants entered the European Union, bringing the total of the foreign-born population in the bloc to nearly 40 million.

Having ridden into power on a tide of anti-migrant sentiment, populists in Central Europe have been further galvanized by Italy’s coalition government formed by Matteo Salvini’s far-right Lega and Luigi Di Maio’s Five Star Movement (M5S).

The new Italian government increased the political temperature over migration earlier this month when Interior Minister Salvini announced a ban on humanitarian rescue ships docking at Italian ports after picking up migrants in the waters off Libya. Salvini argues the rescue ships are indirectly encouraging smugglers and migrants and are in effect in league with traffickers.

On Sunday three ships, an NGO vessel and two Italian naval ships, carrying more than 600 migrants docked in the Spanish port of Valencia. They were rescued a week ago off the coast of Libya and have remained at sea while the European Union insisted Italy had a duty to admit them. The ban prompted an exchange of insults between Paris and Rome.

Speaking Friday in Paris after meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime minister Giuseppe Conte said EU rules have to change with a re-writing of the Dublin Treaty that requires migrants to claim asylum in the first country they arrive.” The concept itself of the ‘state of first entry’ must be rethought,” he said. President Macron argued against any unilateral action by individual member state, saying there had to be an overall European response to migrants.

But Macron accepts change is needed, saying “the existing European response has not adapted.”

In Valencia, the Spanish Red Cross set up a reception center staffed by more than 1,000 volunteers and 400 translators.

More than 23,000 migrants have reached European shores this year, with about 42 percent arriving in Italy from Libya. Thirty-eight percent arrived in Greece from Turkey and 20 percent arrived in Spain from Morocco, according to the International Organization for Migration.
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