A/HRC/39/22 I. Introduction 1. The Human Rights Council, in its resolution 36/1, requested the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to submit a report to the Council at its thirty-ninth session on the geographical composition of the staff of the Office of the United High Commissioner (OHCHR) and the actions taken within the current staff selection system to achieve an equitable geographical representation of the Office. 2. Chapter II of the present report includes data on staff members in regular budget posts subject to geographical distribution, and data on staff in temporary posts funded from general temporary assistance and extrabudgetary resources, or in technical cooperation project posts, neither of which are included in the definition of posts subject to geographical distribution. 3. Chapter III contains a description of the measures for improvement taken by the High Commissioner under the staff selection systems in force in 2017 (ST/AI/2010/3, ST/AI/2010/3/Amend.1, ST/AI/2010/3/Amend.2, ST/AI/2010/3/Amend.3, ST/AI/2016/1, ST/AI/2016/1/Amend.1 and ST/SGB/2016/2/Rev.1). II. Composition of the staff of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 4. The recruitment of staff members to posts subject to geographical distribution is governed by the system of desirable ranges at the Secretariat level. For that purpose, Member States are grouped into four categories: unrepresented, underrepresented, within range and overrepresented. A Member State is considered unrepresented when none of its nationals, throughout the entire Secretariat, is serving in a post subject to geographical distribution and filled in accordance with the established selection process. It is underrepresented when the number of its nationals appointed to such posts throughout the entire Secretariat is below the lower limit of the desirable range. It is within range when the number of its nationals appointed to such posts is between the upper and lower limits of the desirable range, and it is overrepresented when the number of its nationals appointed to such posts within the entire Secretariat exceeds the upper limit of the desirable range. The representation status of Member States is affected by many factors, in particular the turnover of staff and changes in the scale of assessments. OHCHR is the Secretariat entity with the largest number of staff with geographical status. 1 5. The official report on the composition of the Secretariat is submitted annually by the Secretary-General to the General Assembly in accordance with a number of resolutions, the most recent being Assembly resolutions 65/247, 66/234, 67/255, 68/252, 72/254 and 71/263. 6. The most recent report of the Secretary-General on the composition of the Secretariat (A/72/123) covers the period from 1 July to 31 December 2016. OHCHR is part of the Secretariat and the breakdown of its geographical composition has to be seen against the breakdown of overall distribution within the Secretariat. 7. In August 2011, the Office of Human Resources Management launched an online reporting tool, “HR Insight”, which is available to all permanent missions. Since then, staff demographic information has been available to all permanent missions. The tool is based on the human resources data warehouse and enables the retrieval of information from other human resources systems, including the Integrated Management Information System and Umoja. 8. Through HR Insight, Member States have regular access to information similar to that presented in the report of the Secretary-General on the composition of the Secretariat. HR Insight presents the information mainly at the staff member level, while the report of 1 2 See A/72/123, table 23.