Geneva: The Chief of the United Nations on Monday warned that human rights were “strangled” globally, including by wars and violence as well as autocrats who crushed opposition and trampled on international law.

“Human rights are oxygen of humanity,” the United Nations Chief Antonio Guterres told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

“But one by a strangle human rights,” he said, adding, “By autocrats, crushing resistance because they fear what a truly empowered people would do. By a patriarchy that keeps girls out of school and women in arm’s length from basic rights .

Warmer in the meantime “thumb their nose by international law, international humanitarian law and the UN -Charter,” he said, while wars and violence stripped people “of their right to food, water and education”.

Guterres also pointed to the impact of “a moral bankruptcy global financial system” and “ongoing technologies such as artificial intelligence, which have a great promise, but also the ability to violate human rights by touching a button”.

He highlighted “growing intolerance to whole groups – from indigenous peoples, to migrants and refugees”, as well as “votes on division and anger that consider human rights not as a blessing of humanity, but as a barrier to power, profits and control they seek ”.

Everyone combined, “This represents a direct threat to all the hard -won mechanisms and systems established in the last 80 years to protect and promote human rights,” he warned.