Speech
Published on February 10, 2026
by Uzra Zeya
Remarks by President and CEO Uzra Zeya:
Thank you, Thinlay, and thank you to the Tibet Bureau in Geneva for organizing this timely and important forum. As the President of Human Rights First, a longtime champion of justice, dignity and equality worldwide, I’m honored to be here with you all.
As many of you know, the dystopian system of repression imposed on Tibet has long served as a testing ground—one that has later been expanded and refined for use against other religious and ethnic minorities. We have seen this most starkly with the Uyghurs; the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) unrelenting pursuit of surveillance technologies, mass detention, forced labor, and forced assimilation policies in Tibet were later scaled up in Xinjiang. It reminds us that what happens to one community rarely stays confined to that group alone.
But before I address accountability measures for the breadth of human rights violations perpetrated by the CCP against Tibetans, Uyghurs, Hong Kongers, and other communities under siege, let me begin with a candid acknowledgement. This is a very tough moment globally for human rights, including in the United States, because of receding U.S. human rights leadership.
Domestically, we’ve witnessed an unprecedented, escalating anti-immigrant crackdown, linked to a broader assault on constitutional protections for all, that saw two American human rights activists killed by federal agents last month. Since January 2025, the Trump administration decimated the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, violated non-refoulement obligations, and stripped away protections for hundreds of thousands of non-citizens fleeing persecution and harm. Many of you probably already know about the notorious case last year in New York of a Chinese father and his six-year-old son who had applied for asylum and were detained at a routine immigration appointment, separated, and then deported. We’ve also seen unlawful transfers of asylum seekers to third countries with abysmal human rights records –from El Salvador to Eswatini – placing them at grave risk of further abuse.
Internationally, the second Trump administration has repudiated decades of bipartisan U.S. democracy and human rights leadership. Its 2025 National Security Strategy avoids the term “human rights” entirely, referring instead to a vague concept of “natural rights” that limits freedoms and who enjoys them. And strikingly, the China section of that strategy makes no mention of rights at all.
Consistent with this worldview, the Trump administration cut more than two billion dollars from annual democracy and human rights funding last year, while slashing U.S. personnel charged with these issues. In doing so, it imperiled thousands of civil society organizations committed to advancing human rights and democracy, including many focused on China. It is troubling to see other international funders follow suit.
And particularly relevant to our conversations here, the Trump administration has withdrawn from and in some cases attacked many important multilateral processes and bodies addressing human rights and accountability, including the UN Human Rights Council and its Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process as well as the International Criminal Court.
So I’m sorry to say that at the present time, it’s going to be difficult for us to find a willing, credible and consistent partner in the U.S.executive branch in advancing our work in addressing the abuses against minority populations in China.
And yet—despite all of this—we cannot give up on multilateral institutions and processes or the governments engaged in them. We simply cannot afford to.
Even though the United States has withdrawn from participation in its own UPR—placing itself in the company of Nicaragua—we must continue to defend the UPR as a vital accountability mechanism.
U.S. civil society has been doing exactly that by conducting its own shadow UPR process. This includes domestic hearings and Geneva side events on the human rights situation in the United States, one of which I was honored to join last November.
With all due respect to Special Rapporteur Levrat, I fundamentally disagree with your assertion that the PRC government is saving the multilateral system, but rather, I see it seeking to bend and obstruct it to its own ends. That said, last year’s China UPR demonstrated why multilateral institutions matter. Despite Beijing’s obstruction, the process provided a critical opportunity to shine a global spotlight on CCP abuses in Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and beyond. Many of you in this room played a crucial role in that effort, which highlights the ongoing value of the UPR.
We must also continue to use treaty review processes aggressively and strategically. China submitted its most recent reports under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 2023 and under the Convention Against Torture in early 2025. Although the reviews of those reports have yet to be scheduled, when they are, we must act. On the CRC, we should call out the forced assimilation to which Tibetan, Uyghur, and other minority children are subjected, including compulsory boarding schools that aim to erase their religious and linguistic identity. The review under the CAT will also be an essential moment to document and challenge the widespread use of torture and ill-treatment of detainees across China, including in Tibet and Xinjiang.
Later this year, China’s next report under the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights is due. That review will provide another important opportunity to highlight violations of cultural rights—language suppression, religious repression, and the destruction of cultural heritage—in Tibet, Xinjiang, and other regions with significant ethnic minority communities.
We must also continue to defend the value of these treaties, still under ongoing Trump administration review. Up to now, wholesale U.S. multilateral retreat – exemplified by withdrawal from the Human Rights Council and 66 more UN and international institutions – has yet to extend to human rights treaties. We must do our best to prevent a similar outcome. To that end, we at Human Rights First organized a joint civil society statement last year, calling on governments to commit to defending UN human rights and refugee treaties, which has received over 300 signatories to date. If any of you have yet to sign that statement, we urge you to do so.
Use of the so-called UN Special Procedures also continues to be indispensable. A recent joint statement by a group of Special Rapporteurs on forced labor imposed on Uyghurs, Tibetans, and members of other ethnic minorities was especially strong, and it should be widely cited and leveraged. Earlier joint statements by special rapporteurs have also been helpful, and ongoing engagement with mechanisms like the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is important. Even when China refuses to comply with the findings of such groups, they establish moral and legal precedents. They ensure that abuses are recorded, named, and not forgotten.
We should also continue to call for individualized sanctions against serious human rights abusers, even if the chances of success in the current political environment are slim. While the Trump administration’s overall approach to human rights has been deeply damaging, it is worth acknowledging the sanctions that it imposed last year on six senior Hong Kong officials for their role in undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy. At the same time, it usefully imposed visa restrictions on Chinese officials involved in denying access to Tibet.
One emerging idea we are exploring is the concept of “social sanctions”—measures that target the status, legitimacy, and social standing of serious human rights abusers or purveyors of significant corruption, rather than only their finances or travel. In 2020, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam was slated to receive an honorary fellowship from Wolfson College at Cambridge University. She withdrew after a concerted effort to call attention to the abuses Lam’s forces carried out under the draconian National Security Law, followed by a statement of concern by Wolfson. We should pursue similar opportunities with other senior officials when they arise.
We must also push Secretary Rubio to name publicly a Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues and restore the supporting office he eliminated last July, to help ensure adequate attention to action on the ongoing abuses taking place there, including with respect to accountability measures. Fortunately, there is sustained support for Tibet in the U.S. Congress, as reflected in the recently enacted appropriations bill, which earmarks considerable funding for Tibetan communities. There is also a partial restoration of democracy and human rights funding in that bill, which we urge the Trump administration to program and spend as required by law.
Support for human rights defenders on the ground also remains essential. We were very disappointed in the Trump administration’s decision to terminate various programs supporting human rights defenders in China as well as the funds providing emergency assistance generally to HRDs around the world, including the Lifeline Fund. We must prioritize restoration of such assistance. In this regard, the establishment of a new multi-donor mechanism—the Lighthouse Fund—to support HRDs at risk is a very positive step. Even if the United States may decline to support it, other governments should.
Finally, I want to emphasize one area that deserves significantly more attention when it comes to accountability for human rights abuses in China: trade, business, and corporate accountability.
Historically, much of our community’s advocacy has focused primarily on governments. That remains essential. But it is no longer sufficient, especially given the ways in which many governments, including the U.S., are increasingly reluctant to take on China. We must also target business decision-making and corporate behavior.
China cares deeply about its economic bottom line—arguably as much as, if not more than, what governments say in diplomatic forums.
In this respect, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) has been a game-changer, both in the United States and globally. The rebuttable presumption that goods produced in or by persons from Xinjiang are made with forced labor and thus cannot be imported into the U.S. has had real impact. Billions of dollars’ worth of goods have been detained (although the amount has declined significantly under the Trump administration). Major companies across different sectors have been affected. And the law has significantly reshaped corporate risk calculations: virtually any company with supply chains touching China that wants to import goods into the U.S. now has to factor compliance with forced labor laws into its operations if it wants access to that market.
Versions of this approach are spreading. The European Union recently adopted a forced labor regulation which will be implemented by member-states over the next several years. The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, while recently watered down, still sets an important precedent by requiring companies of a certain size to consider the human rights impacts of their operations. National due diligence laws in Germany, France, and Norway remain in force, and similar laws or guidelines have been adopted or are under consideration in Brazil, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia.
There are also important developments in litigation, including efforts to clarify corporate liability for aiding and abetting human rights abuses under laws like the Torture Victims Protection Act. The U.S. Supreme Court has recently agreed to hear a case considering the question of whether the U.S. company Cisco Systems should be held liable for developing and selling to the Chinese government a surveillance and internal-security system that was then used to find and interrogate Falun Gong practitioners. While I am not hopeful about the outcome of this case, it does provide us with an opportunity to highlight that companies that engage in China must consider the human rights implications of their activities if they wish to avoid legal or other risk.
In sum, if we are serious about accountability for abuses in Tibet, Xinjiang, and elsewhere in China, we must focus more on influencing business decisions and operations there because, in many cases, this may have a greater practical impact than traditional government advocacy alone.
So, to return to the question posed by this forum—what next on accountability?—the answer is not one thing, but many: engaging and defending multilateral processes even when they are under attack; advocating the use of traditional along with non-traditional sanctions; supporting human rights defenders; and advocating for economic requirements and incentives that bring in private sector actors as human rights stakeholders with respect to their operations.
None of this is easy. None of it is guaranteed to succeed. But abandoning these tools would be a far greater failure. Thank you.