UNITED NATIONS, May 27 (Xinhuanet) -- Human Rights High Commissioner Louise Arbour on Friday outlined a strategic vision for the future and called for tools to increase her office's global leadership and its engagement with individual countries.

    "Our objective must be to help bridge the gap between the loftyrhetoric of human rights in the halls of the United Nations and its sobering realities on the ground," Arbour said in a report toUN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who has transmitted it to the General Assembly.

    The report, "Plan of Action: Protection and Empowerment," was aresponse to Annan's sweeping UN reform report "In Larger Freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all," which reaffirmed the centrality of human rights to the UN and recalled that the protection of human rights is essential to building a more secure and prosperous world, she noted.

    "In an organization pledged to promote and protect human rights,this is a call to action. In a world plagued by daily assaults on dignity and freedom, it is a call to conscience," she wrote.

    The plan of action identified poverty, discrimination, impunity,conflict, failure to act democratically and institutional weaknesses as areas needing special focus. To correct the deficits,it called for more country and regional offices, enhanced monitoring of human rights observance and faster response to requests for aid.

    Arbor also called for doubling the budget for her office, whichcurrently stands at 86.4 million US dollars, only 1.8 percent of the UN budget. Most of the office's budget comes from other sources.

    "To raise the standards of the office will need to double its 86.4 million dollars budget over the next five or six years," she said.

    In the report, she also expressed support for Annan's proposal that the 53-member Commission on Human Rights should be upgraded to a small, standing Human Rights Council. Enditem