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Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (A/71/36)

Attachments

I. Introduction

  1. The present report, submitted pursuant to General Assembly resolution 48/141, provides an illustration of the activities of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) at headquarters and in the field between August 2015 and July 2016. It is structured in line with the OHCHR thematic priorities detailed in its management plan for 2014-2017.1 As at July, OHCHR was supporting 64 field presences and had 1,165 staff members.

  2. During the reporting period, the High Commissioner visited Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, France, Mexico, Norway, Qatar, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America; the Deputy High Commissioner visited Denmark, Iraq, Turkey (on the occasion of the World Humanitarian Summit) and the United Arab Emirates; and the Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights conducted visits to Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia (to attend the African Union Summit as part of the Secretary-General’s delegation), the Republic of Moldova, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Ukraine.

  3. OHCHR public advocacy continued to have a powerful impact in shaping public attitudes on important human rights issues. In the period under review, OHCHR published 140 feature stories to showcase its impact on rights-holders’ lives and launched several communications campaigns. In 2015, close to 80 videos were produced and almost 1,200 media products issued about the work of OHCHR, with 20,100 media articles generated by OHCHR media products alone. OHCHR also considerably expanded its outreach to rights-holders through the revamped home page of its website and its social media platforms, with close to 5 million followers.

  4. In terms of management, following the request by the General Assembly in its resolution 70/247, the High Commissioner further developed his proposal to strengthen OHCHR regional presences with the objective of enhancing OHCHR effectiveness and efficiency in delivering the mandate granted by the General Assembly in its resolution 48/141 and implementing the Secretary-General’s Strategic Framework. The proposal puts forward the redeployment and upgrading of posts from Geneva to locations in the field in order to strengthen six of the existing regional offices and to establish two new ones. It will be submitted to the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions in the autumn of 2016.