This email was adapted from the speech delivered at the UN Human Rights Council 49th Session on March 1, 2022.

More than at any other point in recent history, the principles at the heart of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s work – and the entire United Nations – are being challenged.

Russia is currently carrying out a premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attack on Ukraine, violating international law, flouting the core principles of international peace and security, and creating a human rights and humanitarian crisis.

Reports of Russia’s human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law mount by the hour.

Russian strikes are hitting schools, hospitals, and residential buildings. They are destroying critical infrastructure, which provides millions of people across Ukraine with drinking water, gas to keep them from freezing to death, and electricity. Civilian buses, cars, and even ambulances have been shelled. Russia is doing this every day – across Ukraine.

The UN High Commissioner said yesterday that Russia’s attacks had killed at least a hundred civilians, including children, and wounded hundreds more – and said she expects the real figures are much higher. And the casualties keep mounting, including the many civilians killed and wounded in Russia’s monstrous rocket strikes that hit an apartment complex in Kharkiv yesterday. Russia’s violence has driven over half a million Ukrainians from the country in just a few days, including children, the elderly, and people with disabilities, who are making harrowing journeys through conflict zones.

If President Putin succeeds in his stated goal of toppling Ukraine’s democratically elected government, the human rights and humanitarian crises will only get worse. Look at Crimea, where Russia’s occupation has come with extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture, arbitrary detention, the persecution of ethnic and religious minorities, and the brutal repression of dissent.

The Kremlin is also ramping up its repression within Russia – where, even before the invasion, it was shuttering human rights organizations and harassing, poisoning, and imprisoning anti-corruption activists and political opponents.

Authorities reportedly have detained thousands of Russians peacefully protesting the invasions, as well as journalists covering the demonstrations. Russian officials issued a warning to the country’s press that any reporting that refers to the assault as “an attack, an invasion, or a declaration of war” – in other words, that tells the truth – will result in media outlets being blocked and fined. And Russia’s Prosecutor’s Office said that any Russian who assists a foreign country, foreign organization, or international organization during its so-called “operation” may be imprisoned for up to 20 years.

These are the human rights abuses the UN Human Rights Council was created to stop. If the Council cannot come together now, when will we come together?

We must send a resolute and united message that President Putin should unconditionally stop this unprovoked attack, as the Secretary General and the High Commissioner have done, and immediately withdraw Russian forces from Ukraine.

We, the UN Human Rights Council, must condemn, firmly and unequivocally, Russia’s attempt to topple a democratically elected government, and its gross human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law. And we must take steps to hold the perpetrators accountable. The UN Council’s decision to hold an urgent debate on the crisis in Ukraine is an important step toward ensuring documentation and accountability, and I thank the many members who supported it.

We must underscore Russia’s obligation, even in its unlawful invasion, to respect international humanitarian law, including as it relates to the protection of civilians in the conflict.

UN Council members should stop using language implying that all sides bear equal responsibility for the unprovoked attack of one side. This isn’t even-handed – it’s wrong – and fails to place accountability where it belongs. The same goes for UN members who argue, falsely, that denouncing human rights abuses is “politicizing” the situation. It is failing to speak up about human rights abuses that politicizes the situation.

We must reject Russia’s attempts to falsely justify this attack as a defense of human rights – misappropriating terms that we reserve for the worst atrocities and disrespecting every victim of those crimes.

Finally, we must press the Kremlin to respect the human rights of all Russians – including the right of citizens to peacefully express dissent and journalists to report the news – and provide information to the families of Russian soldiers, who deserve to know the fate of loved ones killed in President Putin’s war of choice.

One can reasonably ask whether a UN member state that tries to take over another UN member state – while committing horrific human rights abuses and causing massive humanitarian suffering – should be allowed to remain on the UN Human Rights Council.

Even as the UN Council focuses on the crisis in Ukraine, it is far from the only part of the world where the Council’s attention is needed.