This is the story of a mother and #UNICEF staff member, whose treatment by the very organization tasked with protecting children’s rights stands as a shocking betrayal of its mandate.
The staff member began her journey with #UNICEF in #Gaza as a UN Volunteer (UNV) Assistant Education Officer in October 2022. By February 2024, pregnant with her second child and increasingly concerned about her health amidst Gaza’s deteriorating medical infrastructure, she requested a medical evacuation. It was not a request for privilege but a plea for survival—for her life and that of her unborn child. UNICEF also had a responsibility to evacuate her medically.
UNICEF evacuated her to Cairo, where she gave birth in April 2024. Just weeks later, the Rafah border closed, leaving her stranded in Egypt with a newborn and a toddler. The staff member became a #Palestinian #refugee in a foreign land, grappling with a dire reality. Her UNV contract was set to expire in June 2024, but UNICEF extended it for the duration of her maternity leave—a decision dictated by UN policy, not generosity.
What UNICEF did next was a cold and calculated act that destroyed any pretense of compassion or humanity.
At the end of her maternity leave, UNICEF terminated her contract.
No transition plan.
No support.
No accountability.
A Palestinian refugee from Gaza, a mother of two young children—was left without an income and stranded in a country where she had no legal residency.
Desperate, she sent an email to UNICEF, offering to risk the unimaginable: returning to Gaza, a war-torn land with her seven-month-old baby and three-year-old child, if it meant retaining her sole source of income.
UNICEF’s shocking response?
They silenced her entirely by shutting down her email account, severing her last lifeline to plead for her children’s survival.
Yes, you read that right.
This is how UNICEF treated their own staff member—a woman and a mother—during one of the most severe humanitarian crises of our time.
UNICEF claims to uphold the rights of children and advocate for their well-being. Yet, when faced with the plight of their own staff member’s children, they turned away.
How can we trust UNICEF to safeguard the rights of the world’s most vulnerable children if they fail to protect the children of their own staff?
The justification is always the same: budget constraints, post-conversion processes, or bureaucratic hurdles. But none of these excuses explain why her UNV contract could not be extended. She had served UNICEF for two years, and her evacuation to Cairo was a medical necessity—not a luxury. Instead, it appears UNICEF cynically treated her maternity leave as an opportunity to sever ties, hiding behind technicalities while abandoning her and her children to an uncertain fate.
Why should any woman be forced to choose between the right to embrace motherhood and the right to a fulfilling career?
Perhaps UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell cares to answer?
This is not just a failure of UN policy—it is a failure of ethical responsibility and the UN’s duty of care, perpetuated by an organization that claims to champion the rights of women and children.
Today, she remains in Egypt, a refugee in every sense of the word. Without legal residency, she cannot work. She cannot provide for her children. She faces insurmountable social, financial, and psychological challenges.
To UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous
What are you doing to ensure that women are not forced into impossible choices that risk their lives, jeopardize their children’s futures, and strip away their livelihoods? IIf such failures continue unchecked, what is the true value of your high-profile position and the mandate it represents?
UN Women’s mandate is clear: to champion gender equality and empower women, ensuring they can fully exercise their rights—including the right to work and to motherhood without fear or discrimination. Yet, in the case of the staff member, a mother and a UN staff member, these principles have been utterly abandoned.
How can the UN Women justify forcing staff like her to choose between their maternity leave, a perilous return to Gaza, or termination of their contracts?
Where is the accountability to uphold the very values that #UNWomen is meant to represent? How can women across the UN system trust that they will be supported in their roles as professionals and mothers if even your leadership has remained silent in the face of such injustice?
How the War in Gaza Exposed UN Hypocrisy and Empty Promises
The war in Gaza has exposed many truths, but perhaps none as stark as the hypocrisy of institutions like UNICEF and UN Women. Organizations that positions themselves as the global defender of children’s rights and women’s empowerment and who failed spectacularly in upholding those principles for their own staff.
This story is a glaring indictment of a system that preaches equality and protection but practices abandonment and betrayal. For the staff member and her children—living as refugees, stripped of dignity and support—the question is not just whether the UN will uphold the principles it preaches. It is whether the world can trust institutions that exploit their own policies to discard those who serve them.
If #UNICEF and #UNWomen are unwilling to protect the very women and children in their own organizations, how can they claim the moral authority to safeguard anyone else’s?
We must demand justice for the staff and her children by calling for her immediate reinstatement with the full dignity and support she deserves—because anything less is an acceptance of hypocrisy and a betrayal of the very principles UNICEF claims to uphold.
#UNICEFAccountability #ProtectMothersAndChildren #MaternityRights #SupportPalestinianRefugees #WomenInCrisis #AccountabilityNow #GazaVoices #ChildrensRights
