Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has described the US decision to quit the UN Human Rights Council as a “mistake”.

The United States is withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council, the US ambassador to the world body said, calling it "an organisation that is not worthy of its name".

The US has deployed a truck-mounted missile system into Syria, an official confirmed.

Your letters, your views

Your letters, your view.

The Government’s refusal to intervene in the case of an Irish-owned university in the Middle East which has been at the centre of human rights abuses is to be aired before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva today.

An umbrella group representing 17 Irish groups is in Geneva highlighting human rights issues here.

A UN committee will today hear that a great deal more work needs to be done on behalf of Irish children, writes Emily Logan

THIS week the world’s significant leaders will meet at the UN Summit in New York. 

The UN’s human rights chief has said his office has received reports that Boko Haram fighters retreating from advancing military forces in Nigeria murdered women and girls they had taken as “wives”, along with other captives.

Last summer, the chair of the UN Human Rights Committee described Ireland’s human rights record, particularly in relation to women and children, as ‘quite a collection’.

Slowly and forensically, layer by granular layer, the human rights treaty bodies have been building a three-dimensional model of Ireland’s compliance with its international obligations, writes Mark Kelly.

The UN human rights investigator for North Korea said he would probe allegations of an estimated 20,000 North Koreans working in slave-like conditions abroad, mainly in China, Russia, and the Middle East.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said the killing of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was a “heinous crime which will be fully investigated”.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that Hamas and the Islamic State group (IS) are “branches of the same poisonous tree,” both bent on world domination through terror, just as the Nazis were.

The president of the UN top human rights body says the commission on possible violations of the rules of war in Gaza is "operational" despite the decision by George Clooney’s fiancée to pull out of the panel.

Jordan has circulated a revised UN resolution calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and condemning “all violence and hostilities against civilians”.

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Irish cities on Saturday to call for an end to Israel’s military action in Gaza and a boycott of Israeli goods.

I would like to personally apologise to all the Palestinian people for my Government’s "abstention" in the UN Human Rights Council commission of inquiry into the Israeli invasion of Gaza and the slaughter of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children.

Government TDs have said the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador to Ireland should be considered as pressure mounts for an emergency Dáil debate on the Gaza crisis.

The Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan has met the Israeli Ambassador to raise the Government's concerns about the escalating violence in Gaza.

Sinn Féin has written to the Taoiseach asking for him to recall the Dáíl from its nine-week summer break to discuss the crisis in Gaza.

Ireland’s refusal to support a United Nations inquiry into allegations of war crimes in Gaza is a dereliction of the state’s proud humanitarian history, it has been claimed.

The Government has been condemned for its "utterly shameful" decision to abstain in a UN Human Rights Council vote on whether to launch a commission of inquiry into Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

More than 300 protestors are holding a "die-in" demonstration outside the Department of Foreign Affairs this evening to mark the number of people killed in Gaza.

The UN’s senior human rights official has told diplomats that Israel’s military and Hamas militants appear to have violated international humanitarian law and might have committed war crimes during their two-week war in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas has warned Israel against any retaliation over the deaths of three teenagers in the West Bank, threatening that “the gates of hell will open”.

I would like to support the report of the Universal Periodic Review of the UN Human Rights Council (June 14) who found Ireland in breach of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights "by colluding in the arbitrary incarceration of women and girls in mother and baby homes" and also "by denying Irish people trafficked to the US a right to their nationality".

A UN body said last year it was "surprised" that the issue of illegal adoptions and vaccine trials in mother and baby homes had not been dealt with.

Russia's foreign minister has justified the use of Russian troops streaming into neighbouring Ukraine's Crimea region as a necessary protection for his country's citizens living there.

The Ugandan President signed into law on February 24 legislation that criminalises homosexuality. This new law provides for a 14-year jail term for a first offence and life imprisonment for the offence of ‘aggravated homosexuality’.

Money matters, not morality — that’s the new line in the Arabian sand drawn by Enda Kenny when it comes to human rights abuses.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has deplored the use of chemical weapons in Syria and demanded that those responsible are held accountable.

DESCRIBED as unrealistic and unattainable, the Millennium Development Goals adopted by the UN in 2000 were initially dismissed as requiring too much progress too fast.

Inmates in North Korea’s prison camps have suffered starvation, torture and other “unspeakable atrocities”, UN human rights investigators said in their first report on violations in the reclusive state.

A barrister who has represented victims of the Magdalene Laundries as a law student has been awarded a prestigious legal accolade in Britain.

Parents dissatisfied with how teachers are treating their children face a brick wall as legislation granting them a grievance process still has not been enacted 15 years after it was first draw up.

France said it was certain that the nerve agent sarin had been used in Syria on several occasions following tests it carried out on samples.

The world has a responsibility to ensure human rights are upheld, from Ireland to Syria and Afghanistan, writes Colm O’Gorman

When it comes to politicians, actions really do speak louder than words.

Neither side in the Syrian civil war is doing enough to protect civilians, the UN Human Rights Council said today.

A transgender dentist is to launch a fresh legal challenge for a new birth certificate recognising her as female.

A 15-year-old girl in the Maldives whose stepfather is accused of repeatedly raping her and killing the resulting baby risks being flogged for “fornication” with another man under the nation’s strict Islamic law.