Sunday Times 2
Cash-strapped Human Rights Office at breaking point
UNITED NATIONS, (IPS) – After six weeks in office, the new U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein of Jordan launched a blistering attack on member states for insufficient funding, thereby forcing operations in his office to the breaking point “in a world that seems to be lurching from crisis to ever-more dangerous crisis.”
“I am already having to look at making cuts because of our current financial situation,” he told reporters Thursday, pointing out while some U.N. agencies have budgets of over a billion dollars, the office of the UNHCHR has a relatively measly budget of 87 million dollars per year for 2014 and 2015.
New High Commissioner of the United Nations (UN) for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein of Jordan, looks on during a press conference on October 16, 2014 in Geneva. AFP PHOTO / FABRICE COFFRINI
“I have been asked to use a boat and a bucket to cope with a flood,” he said, even as the Human Rights Council and the Security Council saddles the cash-strapped office with new fact-finding missions and commissions of inquiry — with six currently underway and a seventh “possibly round the corner.”
Jens Martens, director of the Global Policy Forum (GPF) in Bonn, told IPS that governments treat the United Nations like firefighters.
“They call them to a fire but don’t give them the water to extinguish the fire and then blame the firefighters for their failure,” he said.
Martens welcomed the “the powerful statement” by the UNHCHR, describing it as a wake-up call for governments to take responsibility and finally provide the necessary funding for the United Nations.
Martens said for many years, Western governments, led by the United States, have insisted on a zero-growth doctrine for U.N. core budget.
“They bear major responsibility for the chronic weakness of the U.N. to respond to global challenges and crises,” he added.
The Office of the UNHCHR depends on voluntary contributions from member states to cover almost all of its field activities worldwide, as well as essential support work at its headquarters in Geneva.
“Despite strong backing from many donors, the level of contributions is not keeping pace with the constantly expanding demands of my Office,” Zeid said.
Peggy Hicks, global advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, told IPS the dramatic gap between the demands on the U.N. human rights office and the resources it has available is unsustainable.
“It’s time for states to match their commitment to human rights by providing the resources needed for the High Commissioner and his team to do their jobs,” she said.
Renzo Pomi, Amnesty International’s representative at the United Nations, told IPS it is wrong that the office of the UNHCHR’s core and mandated activities are not fully funded from the U.N.’s regular budget.
This, despite the fact, — as the High Commissioner himself points out — human rights are regularly described as one of the three pillars of the United Nations (along with development and peace and security).
Pomi said the office receives just over three percent of the U.N.’s regular budget.
“That makes for a short pillar and a badly aligned roof. U.N. member states should make sure that its core and mandated activities are properly funded,” he added.
Singling out the cash-crisis in the World Health Organisation (WHO), Martens told IPS a recent example is the weakness of WHO in responding to the Ebola pandemic.
Due to budget constraints WHO had to cut the funding for its outbreak and crisis response programme by more than 50 per cent in the last two years.
It’s a scandal that the fraction of the regular budget allocation for human rights is less than 100 million dollars per year, and that the Office of the High Commissioner is mainly dependent on voluntary contributions.
Human Rights cannot be promoted and protected on a mere voluntary basis.
He said voluntary, and particularly earmarked, contributions are often not the solution but part of the problem.
Earmarking tends to turn U.N. agencies, funds and programmes into contractors for bilateral or public-private projects, eroding the multilateral character of the system and undermining democratic governance, said Martens.
“In order to provide global public goods, we need sufficient global public funds,” he said.
Therefore, member states must overcome their austerity policy towards the United Nations.
For many years Global Policy Forum has been calling for sufficient and predictable U.N. funding from governments, said Martens. In light of current global challenges and crises this call is more urgent than ever before, he added.
Zeid told reporters human rights are currently under greater pressure than they have been in a long while. “Our front pages and TV and computer screens are filled with a constant stream of presidents and ministers talking of conflict and human rights violations, and the global unease about the proliferating crises is palpable.”
He said the U.N. human rights system is asked to intervene in those crises, to investigate allegations of abuses, to press for accountability and to teach and encourage, so as to prevent further violations.
But time and time again “we have been instructed to do these and other major extra activities within existing resources,” said Zeid, a former Permanent Representative of Jordan to the United Nations.
The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com
| UN rights chief says in talks with China on Tibet visit
GENEVA, (AFP) – The UN’s new human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said he was in talks with China over a planned visit to Tibet. Zeid told reporters that Beijing had “agreed to the recommendation that there be a visit by the high commissioner to Tibet and so we are discussing this issue with the Chinese authorities”. “I’ve had a few very preliminary discussions about this. We agreed we would sit at some stage and elaborate a concept of how this is going to take place,” he said. Allowing the UN’s top rights official to visit Tibet was among a raft of recommendations issued by the UN Human Rights Council when it assessed China’s record in October 2013. Like its 192 fellow United Nations member states, China is meant to undergo four-yearly reviews by the council, which is the world body’s top human rights forum. Longstanding UN insider Zeid, a Jordanian, succeeded South African Navi Pillay as the high commissioner for human rights in September. At least 130 Tibetans have set themselves alight in China since 2009, according to tallies by campaign groups, in what rights organisations say are protests against government repression in their Himalayan region. Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has described the self-immolations as acts of desperation that he is powerless to stop. China says it grants widespread religious freedoms in Tibet and says its half century of rule has brought social and economic benefits. Protests have also spread to ethnic-Tibetan areas beyond what is administratively classed by China as the Tibet region. A Tibetan student burned himself to death last month in a Tibetan-populated area of Gansu province, in northwest China, overseas media and a campaign group reported. And five Tibetans reportedly died after police opened fire on unarmed protesters in August in Kardze, a Tibetan-majority area of Sichuan province. “Perhaps it’s premature to discuss where exactly I would visit, but in the initial dialogue we spoke of a multi-day visit, so I suspect that I will be able to move around if indeed we are able to get the visit in place soon,” he said. |