Craig Mokhiber Biography
Mr. Craig Mokhiber works at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in New York as a Director. He has worked with the UN since 1992 as a lawyer and expert in international human rights legislation, policy, and methodology. In the 1990s, he oversaw the creation of OHCHR’s groundbreaking research on human rights-sensitive definitions of poverty and human rights-based approaches to development as leader of the Human Rights and Development Team.
In addition, he has led the group of human rights experts attached to the High Level Mission on Darfur, headed the Rule of Law and Democracy Unit, and held positions as Chief of the Economic and Social Issues Section and Chief of the Development and Economic and Social Issues Branch at OHCHR Headquarters. He has also served as the UN’s Senior Human Rights Advisor in both Palestine and Afghanistan.
Facts About Craig Mokhiber And His Resignation As United Nations Human Rights New York Office Director
In a contentious four-page letter to Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mokhiber tendered his resignation.
“This is a textbook case of genocide,” wrote Mokhiber. The final phase of the European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial agenda in Palestine has begun.
Following the revelation of a slew of controversial tweets by monitoring groups, Mokhiber was charged in March with antisemitism and “extreme bias” toward Israel.
After referring to the attacks on Gaza as “a textbook case of genocide,” the director of the UN Human Rights office in New York resigned in protest at how the UN was handling the Israel-Hamas conflict.
In a sharp four-page letter to Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Craig Mokhiber, Director of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ New York Office, tendered his resignation.
“This is a textbook case of genocide,” Mokhiber stated in his letter of resignation. The concluding stages of the European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine are already underway, with the goal of quickly eradicating what remains of the indigenous Palestinian way of life there.
In his letter, Mokhiber expressed his belief in for a one-state solution and his want for Israel to be totally disarmed.
He added, alluding to the creation of two distinct nations for Jews and Arabs as a suggested settlement to the conflict, “First, we in the UN must abandon the failed (and largely disingenuous) Oslo paradigm, its illusory two-state solution.”
Mokhiber accuses the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and a large portion of Europe of being complicit and “not credible mediators,” going even beyond.
Furthermore, the governments of much of Europe, the United States, and the United Kingdom are fully implicated in the heinous attack.
These states are actively equipping the attack, offering financial and intelligence assistance, and providing political and diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities, in addition to their treaty commitments “to ensure respect” for the Geneva Conventions.
The US and other western nations, he argued, “must be acknowledged as real parties to the conflict who are complicit with Israel in the violation of Palestinian rights, and we must engage them as such, rather than as credible mediators.”
Mokhiber was charged in March, months before the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, with antisemitism and “extreme bias” against Israel following the discovery of a slew of divisive tweets by monitoring groups.
He was considered “unfit” to hold his post by detractors who said he had failed to fulfill his duties and lacked objectivity when it came to human rights problems pertaining to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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