Quality and not quantity is the challenge posed. What the OHCHR and its staff are now being pressed to undertake are projects/programmes linked with de­velopment planning, requiring project management skills for which mere knowledge and commitment to human rights alone do not guarantee results. Such management skills involve the know-how to plan, implement and evaluate systematically; yet many of the OHCHR staff arc not accustomed to this and have not been trained on development planning and management. Moreover, OHCHR has no real power to delegate authority to the field, as its administration is subject to and depends upon the approval of other quarters of the UN. The whole set-up is ultimately linked to the issue of UN reform and the placement of the OHCHR in the system, transitioning from an organ used to servicing Geneva-New York-based bodies... to an entity which services the field and is on the front line - and cutting edge - of human rights flashpoints.

Collateral to the above, increasingly UN agencies are integrating human rights into their programme. This is spearheaded by the Secretary-Generals call for all UN agencies to mainstream human rights into their work, known as Action 2, such as to promote accession to human rights treaties, and to implement the various norms and recommendations from the UN human rights system, particularly the human rights treaty bodies and special procedures such as UN Special Rapporteurs. There is now an inter-agency plan between the OHCHR and other UN agencies to work as UNCT, and the activities include, as per the Annual Appeal 2005 of the OHCHR:

"Building UNCTs' capacities: Human rights advisers will he deployed to selected countries to advise UNCTs, a strategy on human rights integration will be developed for UNCTs; seed funds for in - country capacity-building will be made available; and practical tools and modules on national protection systems will he developed.

Joint programming to strengthen national protection system: OHCHR will help to ensure that human rights are integrated into the United Nations common analysis and planning frameworks, such as the Common Country Assessment(CCA) /United Nations Development Assistance Framework(UNDAF), the Consolidated Appeal Process and the Common Humanitarian Action Plan. Support will be provided to UNCT-based theme groups or other mechanisms on human rights that can identify possible joint activities.

Implementation of international human rights standards at the country level: United Nations agencies and UNCTs contribute to the work of the treaty bodies by monitoring State Party's compliance with international conventions, and assist in the fact-finding missions undertaken by the independent experts of the Commission on Human Rights. Activities under this component, which aim to ensure that information submitted by UNCTs is considered by United Nations human rights bodies, and that the recommendations and observations made by human rights bodies are incorporated into UNCT's program­ming, will be funded from existing resources or additional contribu­tions from the agencies' own resources."

Operationally among many UN agencies, there may be country program­ming/office, on the one hand, and regional/sub-regional programming/office, on the other hand. For instance, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has both country programming/office as well as regional programming/office dealing with child rights (although not exclusively). On another front, in recent years UNDP has supported various human rights activities at the national level, e.g. support for national human rights commissions and human rights action plans. It is particularly driven by the Millennium Development Goals (2000). In addition to its country offices, UNDP has started to set up regional centres which also cover human rights issues. A regional centre was recently established in Bangkok to cover the Asia­Pacific region in the areas of access to justice, human rights and indigenous peoples under the general umbrella of "governance". Many of the planned activities are in relation to comparative research, e.g. case studies on projects from 8 countries on rights-based approaches with a view to including women rights issues, and country case studies on policies for inclusive governance for disadvantaged groups, includ­ing indigenous peoples, and related training workshops and public awareness programmes and evaluation. The budget is several million USD and is much larger than OHCHR budget. On a related front, one should not underestimate the financial clout and impact of global financial institutions such as the World Bank which have also started to take an interest in access to justice and Rule of Law issues related with human rights.

The challenge for OHCHR and its link with other UN agencies is to avoid overlaps and coordinate/cooperate well at the country level and regional sub-regional level to act as UN teams rather than as individual UN agencies. An under­lying issue facing the OHCHR is thus how to focus its limited resources on its value-added, especially when many other UN agencies are able or willing to take up human rights issues - often with much more funding than the OHCHR itself. What is its value-added ?

A possible response is to advocate that the OHCHR should concentrate most on its protection role, including related advocacy and follow-up, in areas where other UN agencies are unable or unwilling to tread. Often, it is the challenge of civil and political rights and related conflict issues which are the most sensitive and where other UN agencies are reticent to act, especially as some UN agencies are more geared to development programming on economic, social and cultural issues and are hesitant to question the authorities on civil/political rights and/or fearful of compromising their close relations with the Government of the day. From an intra ­UN family angle, the OHCHR's value-added is possibly to nurture effective integration of international human rights standards into all UN agencies and act as a check-and-balance within the UN family itself to influence respect for human rights.

Importantly, in the Asia-Pacific region where there is no inter-governmental human rights protection system, apart from some nascent sub-regional initiatives, the OHCHR presence and the totality of the UN family have a key role to play as a complementary system for the promotion and protection of human rights - given each agency's value-added. This should not be envisioned as an alternative to building national human rights protection systems and regional sub-regional systems. Rather it should be seen as complementary to the need to build such national and regional sub-regional systems.