UNHCR Standing Committee - EU Statement - Agenda Item 2 b: Human resources

UNHCR 91st STANDING COMMITTEE
8-9 September 2026
Agenda Item 2 b: Human resources
EU statement
Thank you, Chair.
I have the honour to speak on behalf of the European Union as a donor.
We thank UNHCR for the update on human resources, and the High Commissioner Salih for his remarks last week including on workforce and human resources policy.
We reiterate our deep appreciation for UNHCR staff, who continue to deliver for people in need in often extremely difficult circumstances. We recognise the difficulty of managing a workforce reduction of this scale spanning last year's downsizing, the further cuts made this year, and the additional adjustments still likely to come. We acknowledge the service of all colleagues who have left, or will leave, UNHCR through this process.
We welcome the replacement of SIBA with a Redeployment Pool intended to intervene earlier in the assignment cycle and would appreciate more information on how it will function in practice, including entry criteria and outcomes where redeployment is unsuccessful.
On aligning remuneration with position grade, we note the projected 15.8 million USD in annual savings and would welcome further detail on the transitional arrangements for affected staff.
More broadly, we note reports that the recruitment freeze in place since 2023 may be creating medium-term skills gaps, and that reductions have fallen disproportionately on field operations, including Protection and Operational Delivery. We would welcome UNHCR's assessment of how the new skills-based workforce model will address these risks while preserving field experience and protection expertise.
We welcome the Global Workforce Dashboard as a step towards transparency and note with appreciation that gender parity has been maintained across international professional grades despite the scale of the reductions.
Finally, we share the High Commissioner's hope for a stable structural reset and would welcome more detail on the milestones for assessing this stability going forward. Thank you.