The UK Ambassador to the UN, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, has written to UNA-UK to reaffirm the UK's commitment to ensuring the UN's human rights work is adequately funded.
The letter was in response to a UNA-UK campaign which called on the UK to resist proposed budget cuts of $8.3 million for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which was already facing a deficit of $15 million.
Campaign victory?
Sir Mark confirmed that OHCHR's budget was only fractionally reduced for its 2014-2015 work, and that a number of staff positions which had been suggested for abolition were saved, despite a two per cent cut in staffing levels across the UN Secretariat.
OHCHR's budget was in fact only reduced by less than $1 million. Whilst this is welcome news, it does nothing to address the Office's long-term funding crisis at a time of increasing mandates and requests for assistance.
Value for money
As UNA-UK highlighted at the time, the UK has repeatedly called for better budget management by OHCHR. The Department for International Development's 2013 review of OHCHR highlighted the following weaknesses:
- OHCHR needs to do more to demonstrate results in developing countries
- There is a weak results culture, resulting in a lack of standard methodology and a lack of in-house capacity for lesson learning
- There is insufficient evidence to demonstrate that OHCHR has processes in place to manage poorly performing projects/programmes
As part of ongoing efforts to tackle these issues, OHCHR recently launched its first ever four-year management plan (previous plans were produced biennially). In a briefing to member states, High Commissioner Navi Pillay said:
The decision to extend our programming cycle was based on our recognition that human rights results take longer than two years to achieve. We also hope that a four-year cycle will create greater predictability for our international, regional and national partners. At the same time, in order to maintain maximum transparency in the important area of budgets and resources, OHCHR is now providing budget information every year through an Annual Appeal.
OHCHR's Annual Appeal highlights key areas of its human rights work and calls for increased voluntary contributions from member states, corporate donors, foundations and individuals.
