MEDIA RELEASE: 3 MARCH 2025

[Geneva] Tibetan activists and supporters welcome the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk’s, acknowledgement of the worsening human rights situation in Tibet in his global update at the Human Rights Council today. For the first time since he became the highest-ranking human rights official, Türk expressed concern over “education policies and restrictions on freedom of expression and freedom of religion and belief in the Tibet Autonomous Region.” [1] Until now, Tibet has largely been absent from his oral updates. Today’s statement marks an important step forward – but it is not enough given the scale and severity of repression in Tibet. [2] Notably, Volker Türk’s remarks referred only to the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), ignoring the fact that China’s coercive boarding school system is imposed across all of historic Tibet, including in what China calls Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu and Yunnan provinces [3]. By limiting reference to the TAR, Türk overlooked the majority of Tibetans affected by these policies.

Tibet Advocacy Coalition [4] insists that the High Commissioner must go further. To effect real human rights improvements, he must explicitly name China’s boarding school system as a key driver of the forced assimilation of Tibetan children and demand its immediate abolition.

“We cannot afford diplomatic caution when an entire generation of Tibetan children is being systematically cut off from their language, culture, and families,” said Gloria Montgomery, UN Advocacy Director, Tibet Justice Center. “While we welcome the High Commissioner’s statement as progress, his failure to explicitly name China’s colonial boarding schools is a missed opportunity. The Chinese government will interpret broad statements as a sign that it can continue these assimilationist policies unchecked.”

Lhadon Tethong, Executive Director, Tibet Action Institute said: “The High Commissioner had a crucial opportunity to take a stand against China’s forced assimilation policies, yet he shied away from directly condemning the residential boarding schools. If the UN is serious about defending human rights, it must be willing to call out China’s blatant violations without hesitation. We urge Türk to make this a priority in his direct engagement with Beijing and in every international human rights forum.”

Mandie McKeown, Executive Director, International Tibet Network, added: “This is a step forward, but not the decisive action that Tibetans desperately need. The High Commissioner must directly name and condemn these colonial boarding schools in Tibet, just as UN human rights experts have already done. Anything less lets Beijing off the hook.”

Pema Doma, Executive Director, Students for a Free Tibet said: “Tibetan activists and our global allies will not stop until these colonial boarding schools are abolished. The High Commissioner’s statement today was progress, but he must take more urgent, concrete action to hold China accountable. Every day that he hesitates, more Tibetan children are forcibly assimilated.”

Karma Gahler, Co-President, Tibetan Youth Association in Europe: “We welcome the High Commissioner’s recognition of the human rights crisis in Tibet, but his statement falls short of what is needed. After months of advocacy and over 350,000 people calling on him to break his silence, he still failed to directly name China’s residential boarding school system. These coercive schools are the single greatest threat to Tibetan identity today, and if the High Commissioner truly wants to see human rights progress, he must call them out explicitly and demand their closure.”

Over 350,000 people and 140 organisations worldwide urged the High Commissioner to explicitly condemn China’s vast network of residential boarding schools in Tibet [5], where at least one million Tibetan children are systematically separated from their families subjected to political indoctrination and alienated from their culture, including the Tibetan language [6]. Yet, despite the growing global alarm, Türk failed to directly call out this policy—one of the most egregious tools of forced assimilation in Tibet today. This omission is a missed opportunity for meaningful pressure on the Chinese government to abolish these coercive institutions and uphold Tibetan children’s fundamental rights.

UN human rights experts have already expressed alarm about these schools, including unequivocally calling on China to abolish them [7]. The gravity of this crisis [ demands more than careful wording by the UN High Commissioner – it requires clear condemnation and urgent action.

Former Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, Fernand de Varennes, raised serious concern about the one million children in China’s forced boarding schools stating that “they are torn from their environment, their family, they are put in schools and villages far away from their home, their language, culture and religion….I don’t think so many children have ever been kept away from their community, their people before.” [8] Tibet Advocacy Coalition urges the UN High Commissioner to build on today’s statement by making Tibet—and the boarding school crisis—a priority in all his global updates and during all his bilateral discussions with Chinese authorities. If the world’s leading human rights official does not take a clear stand, Beijing will only accelerate its systematic attempt to erase Tibetan identity.

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Lhadon Tethong, Tibet Action Institute: +1 (917) 418 4181, lhadon@tibetaction.net
Gloria Montgomery, Tibet Advocacy Coalition: +44 (0) 7541 362001, gloria@tibetnetwork.org
Pema Doma, Students for a Free Tibet: +1 (617) 792-3606, pemadoma@studentsforafreetibet.org
Mandie McKeown, International Tibet Network: +44 (0) 7748 158618, mandie@tibetnetwork.org

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Notes to Editors:

[1] https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2025/03/turbulence-and-unpredictability-amid-growing-conflict-and-divided

[2] Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2025: The Uphill Battle to Safeguard Rights: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2025/uphill-battle-to-safeguard-rights

[3] GEOGRAPHICAL NOTE: ‘Tibet’ refers to the three Tibetan provinces of Amdo, Kham and U-Tsang. In the 1960s, the Chinese government split Tibet into new administrative divisions: the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), and Tibetan Autonomous Prefectures within Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces. When the Chinese government references Tibet, it is referring to the TAR.

[4] Tibet Advocacy Coalition is a project established in 2013 by International Tibet Network, Tibet Justice Center and Students for a Free Tibet to develop coordinated strategies, monitoring tools, and reports to highlight the situation in Tibet at the United Nations Human Rights Council. The Coalition core members are Tibet Justice Center, International Tibet Network Secretariat, Students for a Free Tibet, Tibetan Youth Association Europe, Tibet Action Institute and Tibet Initiative Deutschland.

[5] https://actions.tibetnetwork.org/un-protect-tibets-children; https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/china_indoctrination_schools_loc/ and https://tibetnetwork.org/joint-letter-un-high-commissioner-for-human-rights/

[6] Tibet Action Institute, “Separated From Their Families, Hidden From the World: China’s Vast System of Colonial Boarding Schools Inside Tibet,” 2021, pg. 24, available at: https://tibetaction.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/2021_TAI_ColonialBoardingSchoolReport_Digital.pdf

[7] UN Communication by Mandates of the Special Rapporteur on minority issues; the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights; the Special Rapporteur on the right to education and the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Ref.: AL CHN 6/2022, 11 November 2022: https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/DownLoadPublicCommunicationFile?gId=27444 ; “China: UN experts alarmed by separation of 1 million Tibetan children from families and forced assimilation at residential schools”, 6 February 2023, available at: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/02/china-un-experts-alarmed-separation-1-million-tibetan-children-families-and;Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Concluding Observations, 6 March 2023: https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=E%2FC.12%2FCHN%2FCO%2F3&Lang=en; Committee on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, Concluding Observations, 30 May 2023: https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=CEDAW%2FC%2FCHN%2FCO%2F9&Lang=en

[8] https://www.instagram.com/reel/DBYj_ynI_Yy/