Addendum 3
Annex
Plan of action submitted by the United Nations
High Commissioner for Human Rights
IV. Building OHCHR capacity
115. The challenges faced by OHCHR in making human rights protection a reality and the actions proposed by the High Commissioner in order for OHCHR to play its part in meeting those challenges were described above. These will require, as noted at the outset, strengthening the management and planning capacity of the Office, improving human resource policies and a substantial increase in financial resources.
A. Management, administration and planning
116. OHCHR is currently in the process of strengthening its management capacity, as elaborated in the budget proposals that I have recently made for the biennium 2006-2007. These will have to be further reviewed and strengthened if we are to deliver on the plans and commitments outlined in the present plan of action. We will need to improve our capacity to prioritize, plan and implement our work better in order to ensure effective delivery and greater accountability.
117. As a first step, we are creating a dedicated centrally placed policy, planning, monitoring and evaluation unit, which, working together with other parts of the house, will help to ensure that the strategic vision of OHCHR is translated into concrete priorities and operational plans. The unit will do so by drawing on existing expertise in the Office, promoting horizontal and vertical linkages, analysing trends in our operating environment and more effectively monitoring results.
118. In order to enhance its capacity to support the human rights programme and to facilitate rapid deployment, OHCHR will require greater operational flexibility through a series of measures, including broader delegation of authority in financial and administrative matters. Its current authority, limited to initiating administrative actions, should gradually evolve towards an authority to approve and implement all such actions, applying the same procedures which have been successfully used by other United Nations departments and offices. As a first step, the following delegation of authority will be sought: establishment of an account to be accessed for emergency response purposes; acceptance of contributions; approval of allotments and temporary posts (against extrabudgetary contributions); authority for recruitment and administration of staff; emergency travel; and procurement. At the same time, new administrative policies will be developed to respond to the expanded operational needs of OHCHR, along the lines of those established by operational United Nations funds and programmes.
B. Staffing
119. OHCHR will need to make substantial changes in its staffing and personnel situation if the goals of the present plan of action are to be met. There are three main areas that need to be improved. Currently, some 86 per cent of staff is at a relatively junior level, providing the Office with good technical expertise but insufficient experience and management capacity. Also, most staff is on short-term contracts, creating instability and negatively affecting staff morale. The High Commissioner has already made some proposals in the biennium budget proposals to address this situation. Further steps will need to be taken to strengthen management capacity. The post regularization exercise currently under way should also help to bring greater stability to the staffing situation. In addition to capitalizing on the human rights expertise, the quality and the commitment of OHCHR staff, it is equally important to ensure attention to the principles of gender balance and the widest geographic distribution when meeting growing human resource demands.
120. Achieving geographical balance in OHCHR will remain one of the priorities of the High Commissioner. While the primary consideration in the selection of staff is the need to secure the highest standards of competence, integrity and efficiency, OHCHR will also pay due regard to recruiting and selecting individuals on as wide a geographical basis as possible. In an effort to widen the pool of qualified human rights candidates, it will continue to work with the Office of Human Resources Management to organize specialized competitive human rights examinations, and successful candidates from underrepresented countries will be carefully considered.
121. Human rights staff is required to carry out a wide variety of tasks, interact with very diverse partners and interlocutors and address an extensive range of substantive issues. To ensure that they work professionally, meeting current and future human rights challenges, they should have access to systematic and comprehensive training that matches the evolving requirements of human rights work. This should include induction training for new staff; predeployment and in-mission training for field staff; and in-service training to ensure upgrading of skills, and briefings on emerging human rights issues and methodology.
122. Finally, numerous evaluations and studies have pointed to the need for OHCHR to ensure better linkages between its field presences and Headquarters, and in this regard a policy to encourage staff rotation has been under discussion for some time. Such a policy would increase the pool of specialized human rights staff willing and available for field deployment and raise the overall proportion of human rights staff with field experience. Enhancing field presence, as suggested in the present plan of action, should proceed with such a policy in place.
C. New York presence
123. The location of OHCHR, away from Headquarters, presents certain obstacles to ensuring human rights issues are at the core of the Organization’s work. Most core United Nations departments and agencies are headquartered in New York, and the Executive Committees and their sub-bodies convene in New York, as does the Security Council, the General Assembly and its committees and the Economic and Social Council. Further, most of the United Nations policy discussions on matters of peace, security and development take place in New York. The New York Office of OHCHR is actively engaged in these discussions, but its staffing has remained constant for some time while demands have continued to grow. The current round of reforms will again significantly expand the Office’s New York-based work, bringing a heightened profile for human rights in the United Nations system, an expediting of the human rights mainstreaming imperative and, as seems likely, a Peacebuilding Commission and its support office. Meeting those demands will require that OHCHR in New York be equipped with a higher proportion of human and financial resources.
D. Financing
124. If the promotion and protection of human rights are to be at the core of the work of the United Nations, there must be a commitment to the providing of resources that are commensurate to the task. There is much that OHCHR can do in the immediate term to advance the objectives outlined in the present plan of action and it intends to take those steps, looking at how best it can utilize existing resources.
125. Ultimately, however, the present plan of action will remain largely aspirational without a significant increase in resources, including a greater proportion of the regular budget and additional extrabudgetary support. While the budgeting process for the 2006-2007 biennium is already advancing, we will develop, in consultation with the Secretary-General, a supplementary budget reflecting an estimated costing of the regular budget requirements of the plan, and will follow that with an appeal for voluntary funding to support those elements appropriate for extrabudgetary resources. In so doing, OHCHR will seek to increase the proportion of its resources that come from the regular budget and will proceed incrementally, in accordance with an appropriate implementation plan.
126. At present, the human rights programme receives only 1.8 per cent of the United Nations budget. The bulk of OHCHR resources, including for key activity requested by United Nations bodies, are therefore in the form of extrabudgetary contributions. The total annual budget of OHCHR is $86.4 million. OHCHR estimates that in order to address the shortcomings identified in the above-mentioned Secretary-General’s report and make a serious effort to step up the work of the Office along the lines suggested in the present plan, it will need to double its overall resources over the next five to six years.
|
