Geneva — Mary Robinson, the "fearless" Irishwoman who has confronted governments with their human rights failures, said Monday that she is leaving the United Nations because she doesn't have enough money to do the job right.
Robinson, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said she believes she can do more to defend people elsewhere.
"Many staff work under unfair pressure," said Robinson, an-nouncing her intention to step down in September without seeking a second four-year term.
Expressing "great regret," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called Robinson "a staunch and fearless spokesperson for human rights throughout the world."
"She has made a critical contribution to giving human rights a central role in the United Nations system," Annan said in a statement issued at U.N. headquarters in New York.
Robinson said her office receives only $20 million from the United Nations' billion-dollar annual budget not enough to cover the increasing workload of the office that investigates human rights abuses around the globe.
"I have tried very hard to argue the case," Robinson said. "I believe it is one of the major disconnects between the eloquence and fine language used by so many representatives of governments and the fact that the core budget allocates less than 2 percent to human rights work."
Robinson quit as Irish president several months early in 1997 to take the U.N. post.
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