United Nations high commissioner for human rights Mrs Mary Robinson has reversed a shock decision to step down from her post. In response to a direct appeal from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, she will now stay on until August 2002.

Her decision to leave, announced at the opening of the annual UN commission on human rights, surprised diplomats gathered in Geneva. There was less surprise among human rights activists, who spoke understandingly of the difficulties Mrs Robinson faced in trying to promote human rights on a starvation budget. "It's a shoe-string," she told The Guardian newspaper. "It's a frayed shoe-string."

Robinson, who took the top UN human rights job in September 1997, is only the second person to hold the office, which was established by the UN general assembly in 1993. Her intention in resigning, it appears, was to seek an academic position from which to campaign for fundamental reform of the UN. The commission receives less than 2% of the UN's budget, and many of its field staff work in highly dangerous situations on insecure, short-term contracts.

Originally, Robinson planned to leave after the world conference on racism in Durban, South Africa, at the end of August this year.

"Racism and xenophobia - manifesting themselves through discrimination and all forms of intolerance - are the wellspring of many of the world's conflicts," she told the commission. Racism leads to a vicious circle of poverty and social exclusion, she said, and is also responsible for the cold welcome given to refugees in many countries. In her speech, she pressed the world's governments to fight against racism as a way of improving rights for people across the world.

During her term of office, Robinson has criticized the narrow conception of human rights as mainly civil and political, insisting that human rights apply also to economic and social life. She has assailed the death penalty in the US, and has been attacked by many countries, including Russia and China, for what they view as "harassment". She would call it standing up for human rights: "I've always recognized as high commissioner the importance of standing up to bullies, addressing shortcomings and being outspoken - an awkward voice."