UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres backs human rights commission’s proposal for international investigation into atrocities being committed in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
The world’s highest diplomat is also calling upon nuclear rivals India and Pakistan to find a political solution to the longstanding Jammu and Kashmir dispute.
“All the action of the (UN) human rights high commissioner is an action that represents the voice of the UN in relation to that issue,” Guterres said.
He was responding to a question from Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) correspondent at his mid-year press conference at UN Headquarters in New York.
Guterres’ remarks came in the wake of a UN call on June 14 for a probe into large scale human rights violations in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein had urged the Human Rights Council “to consider establishing a Commission of Inquiry [COI] to conduct a comprehensive independent international investigation into allegations of human rights violations in Indian occupied Kashmir.
Internationally, a COI is recognized as one of the UN’s highest-level probes into crises like the Syrian conflict.
The decades-old Jammu and dKashmir dispute “has robbed millions of their basic human rights,” Zeid said at that time.
During his briefing on Thursday, responding to a question about his efforts to resolve the Kashmir dispute, the secretary-general said,
“It is clear for me that only political solutions can address political problems.
“Whenever I meet the leaders of both India and Pakistan, I always offer my good offices and I hope that [in ] the future (they) will be able to create the mechanisms of dialogue that will allow for this problem to find an adequate political solution that the people can benefit from,” he added.
Pakistan has always welcomed mediation offers from the United Nations but India rejects them, claiming that Kashmir is a bilateral issue, although it is universally accepted as one of the oldest outstanding disputes on UN agenda.
