UN rights chief warns of $60 million funding shortfall

GENEVA (Reuters) -The United Nations Human Rights Office faces a dire financial crisis with a shortfall of at least $60 million this year due to funding cuts from donor states, its head said on Wednesday.

"I will not be able to staff 11 countries with a human rights presence ... It will mean that people will suffer as a result," the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, told reporters in Geneva.

OHCHR has received $179 million of its $246 million annual regular budget so far for this year, a shortfall of $67 million, it said. Its extra-budgetary budget projects stand at $209 million, which is $60 million less than last year.

Turk pointed to efforts to relocate some staff members to regional offices such as Vienna, Beirut and Panama City to both save costs and bring personnel closer to the countries in their brief.

"I hope that political leadership around the world, including in Europe, wakes up to that reality, and my call on them is to support the human rights course, strategically, politically, but also financially," Turk said.

UNHCR and multiple United Nations agencies are grappling with major funding cuts due to significant donors slashing contributions, particulary the United States which has annually provided nearly a quarter of the U.N. budget.

The upcoming 59th session of the Human Rights Council had to make 250,000 Swiss francs' ($304,803.71) worth of savings, according to its president, and reduce the duration of the meeting by 2.5 days to save money.

"I am concerned... Diplomacy is about listening to each other ... it happens when people meet in Geneva in the corridors," the president of the U.N. Human Rights Council, Ambassador Jurg Lauber, told reporters in Geneva.

"We have now reached a level where we need to take different approaches. We may have to do further cuts," he added.

The Council's gathering begins on June 16 in Geneva.

($1 = 0.8202 Swiss francs)

(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin; writing by Rachel More; editing by Miranda Murray and Mark Heinrich)