Photo taken on June 11, 2019 shows the 12th Session of the Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities at the UN headquarters in New York. The acting chair of Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities said on Tuesday that due to cash flow difficulties United Nations is facing, sessions of six of the ten UN human rights treaty bodies will be cancelled. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)
UNITED NATIONS, June 11 (Xinhua) -- The acting chair of Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities said on Tuesday that due to cash flow difficulties United Nations is facing, sessions of six of the ten UN human rights treaty bodies will be cancelled.
Speaking at the 12th Session of the Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Monthian Buntan, the acting chair, said that the UN informed its human rights treaty bodies in April 2019 about cash flow difficulties.
In practice, this would mean the cancellation of sessions for six of the ten treaty bodies due to financial reasons, resulting in numerous negative consequences including seriously undermining the system of protections which member states themselves have put in place over decades, Buntan said.
The issue of financial resources to fund the travel of a representative of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to the Conference of States parties has not been resolved, he added.
The acting chair requested the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the member states to find ways of addressing this situation, as a matter of urgency, as the human rights treaty bodies are "deeply concerned about the practical consequences of cancelling these sessions."
Guterres one week ago highlighted the UN's deteriorating financial situation. He said that a major cause of the world body's deteriorating financial health in the past few years is the increase in arrears from member states.
