Funding Context The income of the UN Human Rights Office comes, at a rate of approximately 40 per cent, from the United Nations regular budget. The remainder is covered by voluntary contributions from Member States and other donors. The UN regular budget, approved by the General Assembly every two years, is funded by “assessed contributions” from each Member State which are determined according to a formula that takes into account the size and strength of their respective national economies. The UN regular budget should finance all activities mandated by the General Assembly and its subsidiary organs, including the Human Rights Council (HRC). Human rights is recognized as one of the three pillars of the UN system, the other two being development and peace and security. And yet, the regular budget allocates only a tiny percentage of the resources to human rights that are extended to the other two pillars. With approximately half of all regular budget resources directed to these three pillars, human rights receives less than eight per cent. The approved regular budget appropriation for the Office in 2018-2019 is US$201.6 million, which is just 3.7 per cent of the total UN regular budget. The approved 2018-2019 regular budget is once again a step back from an otherwise long-standing principle of “zero growth.” It entails a number of reductions resulting from General Assembly decisions, including acrossthe-board reductions of between five and 25 per cent of several budget lines. To a large extent, these reductions offset the resources approved for new mandates adopted by the Human Rights Council in 2016 and 2017. The official human rights mandates continue to grow in number and scope, but regular budget resources are not keeping pace. As a result, UN Human Rights continues to rely on voluntary contributions to finance as much as 10 per cent of officially mandated activities that ought to be financed by the regular budget. This challenging financial situation is further exacerbated by the timing of allocations. Although most of the resources required for new mandates are approved each year, the delay in their presentation to the General Assembly means that the Office is forced to rely on existing resources to cover new activities with a more immediate timeline. In 2017, a total of US$142.8 million was raised in voluntary contributions, representing the highest amount ever received by the Office, compared to US$129.6 million in 2016. This 10 per cent growth was due primarily to a number of countries that generously increased UN HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT 2017 77