Former Canadian Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour was to step down as the UN's human rights commissioner on Monday after a four-year tenure that sparked both controversy and praise.

Louise Arbour, seen here listening to a statement during the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in March, has said she is leaving her position for personal reasons. (Keystone/Salvatore Di Nolfi/Associated Press) The Montreal-born Arbour, 61, told a session of the 47-nation UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in March that she was stepping down after one term in the role to spend more time with her family.

"It is for personal reasons. I'm not prepared to make a commitment for another four years of this work," she said at the time of her announcement.

Arbour added that critical attacks on her office, from countries including the United States, have become intolerable and undermine the credibility of her office and the entire UN.

Critics of the rights council have said its members, which include many representatives from the developing world, are too focused on targeting Israel and fail to address rampant rights abuses in areas such as Darfur.

Critical of many governments

Praised by human rights organizations for her work, Arbour has been critical of many governments, ranging from Zimbabwe to China and Russia.

She condemned the use of secret U.S. detention centres for terror suspects and said the American-led "war on terror" was eroding the worldwide ban on torture.

Arbour also drew fire for her criticism of Israel in the wake of its 34-day conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. She said Israel was no less culpable than Hezbollah when it came to the deaths of civilians, adding it made little difference whether the killing was intentional.

She also said that war crimes charges might be warranted against Israel and Hezbollah, which prompted a stinging condemnation from Israel's UN Ambassador Itzhak Levanon for what he called a "misguided and deeply disturbing statement."

Arbour is best known as a chief prosecutor for tribunals into the genocide in Rwanda and human rights abuses in Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

She was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1999. In February 2004, Arbour announced she would leave the Supreme Court to become the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

She replaced Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was killed in the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad in August 2003.