Volker Türk: the man charged with protecting the world’s human rights

Volker Türk, UN high commissioner for human rights, gives a news conference in Khartoum, Sudan, in November. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Nearly three months into his job as the new human rights chief at the UN, Volker Türk has a lot on his plate.

A career UN official and human rights lawyer, mild-mannered, dapper and bespectacled, he has less name recognition than his predecessor, the former president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet. When he saw her before he started, he says, “she was very worried, and I share her worry, about how divisive human rights has become.”