UN Gives Robinson Another Year as Rights Chief
Approval was by consensus without a vote or debate.
Secretary General Kofi Annan had proposed that Robinson -- who in a surprise move had resigned her post in March, only to change her mind two weeks later -- be allowed to stay on the job until Sept. 11, 2002, a year after her current four-year term expires.
According to AFP, Robinson had announced her intention to resign on March 20, just two days before Annan himself announced he was seeking a second five-year term as secretary-general, adding to the pressures on him from key UN members over senior posts.
In Robinson's case, many nations were thought eager to get a less outspoken rights chief after she publicly criticized a slew of abuses around the world, including Russia's treatment of Chechens and China's handling of dissidents.
Nevertheless, many governments and world leaders expressed regret at her initial decision to leave the United Nations. Chief among them was French President Jacques Chirac, who was credited with persuading her to change her mind.
Chirac praised Robinson publicly and backed her complaint that her Geneva-based agency was grossly underfunded at $21 million a year from the United Nations' $1 billion administrative budget.
A former president of Ireland, Robinson is only the second person to hold the post, which she assumed in September 1997, following Jose Ayala Lasso, Ecuador's former UN ambassador.
As human rights commissioner, Robinson sets up investigations of abuses around the world and publicly speaks out on her own when she believes violations have occurred. The 53-member human rights commission meets each spring to decide on which countries her agency should investigate.
She recently expressed regret that the United States, a founding member of the commission, had not been reelected to the body on May 3, saying she hoped Washington would "return speedily as a member of the commission."