UN human rights office defends visits to check on migrants

The UN human rights office was defending on Tuesday plans by new UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet to send experts to Italy and Austria to see how migrants are treated. It is “not unusual at all” for the office to deploy teams to countries, saying they often conduct “working-level visits to various countries where we see that there are human rights concerns for them to look at,” rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said. She said in Geneva that rights office teams were dispatched to Bulgaria, France, Greece, Macedonia, as well as in Italy in 2016, AP reported. At times, the teams return to Geneva and write up reports about their findings. Shamdasani said she didn’t have precise dates for the visits to Austria and Italy, but “I’m told it’s a matter of weeks.”