A/HRC/33/18 I. Introduction 1. The Human Rights Council, in its resolution 28/1, requested the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to submit a comprehensive and updated report to the Council at its thirty-third session, with a special focus on further measures taken to correct the imbalance in the geographical composition of the staff of the Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR), including targets and timetables and other specific actions. The present report is submitted to the Council pursuant to that request. In its resolution 31/1, the Council also requested the High Commissioner to submit a comprehensive and updated report to the Council at its thirty-sixth session, with a special focus on further measures taken to correct the imbalance in the geographical composition of the staff of the Office of the High Commissioner. 2. In the present report, the High Commissioner addresses the composition of the staff of the Office as at 31 December 2015, and describes the developments in the Secretariat that have an impact on the authority of the High Commissioner in the area of human resources. It includes data on staff members in regular budget posts subject to geographical distribution, and on staff in temporary posts funded by 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. The report concludes with a description of the measures taken by the High Commissioner to improve the situation, bearing in mind the issues identified by the Human Rights Council in its resolution 22/2, while fully observing United Nations Secretariat human resources policies, in particular, its recruitment and contractual policies. II. Composition of the staff of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 3. 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. 4. 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 59/266, 60/238, 61/244, 63/250, 65/247, 66/234, 67/255 and 68/252. 5. The latest report of the Secretary-General on the composition of the Secretariat (A/70/605) covers the period from 1 July 2014 to 30 June 2015. OHCHR is part of the Secretariat and the breakdown of its geographical composition has to be seen against the breakdown of the overall distribution within the Secretariat. 2