GENEVA: The UN human rights chief appealed on Thursday for $500 million in funding for 2025 to support its work investigating human rights abuses around the world, from Syria to Sudan, warning that lives hang in the balance.
The UN human rights office (OHCHR) has been grappling with chronic funding shortages that many expect will be exacerbated by cuts to US foreign aid by President Donald Trump.
US funding for OHCHR has gone to monitoring human rights violations in northern Ethiopia after the 2020-2022 civil war and peace-building programs in Colombia, the US Agency for International Development website showed.
The annual appeal is for donations beyond the allocated UN funds from member states’ fees, which make up just a fraction of the office’s needs.
“In 2025, we expect no let-up in major challenges to human rights,” High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk told member states in a speech at the UN in Geneva.
“I am very concerned that if we do not reach our funding targets in 2025, we will leave people ... to struggle and possibly fail, without adequate support,” he said.
He said any shortfall would mean more people remain in illegal detention; governments could continue with discriminatory policies; violations may go undocumented; and human rights defenders could lose protection.
“In short, lives are at stake,” he said, adding that his office last year helped release over 3,000 people in arbitrary detention and supported more than 10,000 survivors of modern slavery and over 49,000 survivors of torture and their families.
A number of countries including the European Union voiced support for OHCHR’s work in the meeting, with China saying it was willing to continue voluntary funding, which in previous years has amounted to about $4 million.
The human rights office gets about 5 percent of the regular UN budget, but the majority of its funding comes voluntarily in response to its annual appeal.
Western states typically give the most, with the United States donating $35 million last year, or about 15 percent of the total received in 2024, followed by the European Commission, UN data from end-November showed. Still, the office received only about half of the $500 million it sought last year.