UN: UN human rights programmes need twice as many staff and twice as much cash if the organisation is to bridge the gap between "lofty rhetoric" and "sobering realities", the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, says in a report to Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
The main UN human rights body is hamstrung in dealing with the "daily assaults on human dignity and freedom" despite progress over the past 60 years, said Ms Arbour.
"In an organisation pledged to promote and protect human rights, this is a call to action," she wrote. "Our objective must be to help bridge the gap between the lofty rhetoric of human rights in the halls of the United Nations, and its sobering realities on the ground."
Ms Arbour said staff and money should double over the next five to six years and more bureaus opened in individual countries.
She called for rapid-response teams, monitors in peacekeeping operations and a proper follow- up to hundreds of findings submitted in reports by UN rights investigators.
The budget for the high commissioner's office in 2004 was $86.4 million, of which $52.6 million came from voluntary contributions and $33.8 million from the UN administrative budget.
Of the 580 staff in the office, 310 are at Geneva headquarters, 17 in country offices and seven in regions. Some 86 per cent of the staff is at a junior level and most are on short-term contracts, Arbour said.
Arbour, a former Canadian supreme court justice who assumed her post nearly a year ago, also said she needed more staff in New York.
She only touched on reforms for the 53-nation Human Rights Commission now under discussion by the General Assembly.
Mr Annan proposed that the commission, criticised for allowing abusers to protect each other, be replaced by a smaller human rights council elected by a two-thirds General Assembly vote.
Ms Arbour also has criticised the commission, saying that the "status quo on this issue is not a credible option".