What Really Happens at UNICEF When You Report Sexual Harassment

A long-serving international female staff member at UNICEF Lana* (name changed to protect her identity) found herself trapped in an ethical and institutional nightmare after reporting sexual harassment and abuse of authority by a senior official in UNICEF’s Executive Office.

The staff member had spent 15 years in the UN system. When the sexual harassment and abuse began, she did what few dare: she filed a formal complaint with UNICEF’s internal investigative body, the Office of Internal Audit and Investigations (OIAI). A bold and principled move. Except the OIAI reports directly to the Executive Director (ED) of UNICEF. And the perpetrator? He works in the Executive Office.

So, unsurprisingly, almost predictably, the OIAI quietly closed the case and dismissed all of Lana’s allegations without proper examination. When the staff member requested a copy of the investigation closure report?

Denied.

No explanation. No legitimate reason. Just a wall of silence and impunity.

Or maybe the reason is obvious: the investigation is just flawed and in essence a lame cover-up. And they had no legal or moral grounds to dismiss the allegations. But when you are the system, you answer to no one. Technically, the staff member could challenge the decision before the UN Dispute Tribunal (UNDT). But that process takes years. And in the meantime, most staff who dare to challenge power are either sidelined, gagged or conveniently  as we all know, terminated.

Which is exactly what happened to Lana.

She appealed to the UNDT, asking the Tribunal to order UNICEF to produce the investigation report. The Tribunal complied. What Lana discovered in that report was staggering: not only had the OIAI neglected to verify or properly assess her evidence, they had turned the report against her. New, completely unfounded allegations had been added: against the victim. The person who had dared to speak up was now being framed as the problem.

Then came the part that strips the UN’s “zero tolerance” policy bare: just words, no backbone.

Lana submitted new evidence. Substantial. Verifiable. She pleaded for the OIAI to reopen the case. 

Lana wasn’t met with silence. Far from it. 

UNICEF responded, but not with accountability, not with a re-investigation, or even a hint of integrity. What she got instead was an offer: A payout. 

A price tag slapped on her silence. 

In plain terms: hush money.

It was UNICEF’s Legal and HR teams who came knocking offering her a “hush money settlement”. The message was clear: erase the evidence, walk away from the Tribunal, take the money, and vanish. And let’s be honest, offers like this don’t land without quiet approval from the very top. The management didn’t want resolution. They just wanted Lana to disappear. Silence was the entire point.

To understand how deep this rot goes, one only needs to look at the internal power structure.

The perpetrator works in the Executive Office, reporting directly to the Deputy Executive Director.

The Deputy Executive Director oversees the Legal and HR Departments who offered “hush money”.

OIAI, the body supposedly tasked with impartial investigation, reports to the Executive Director.

So when Legal and HR offered hush money to Lana, it was, circumstantially, linked to the Deputy Executive Director, who also happens to be the direct supervisor of the perpetrator. Draw your own conclusions.

These reporting structures are what I’d call carefully placed buffer positions. They allow the Executive Director to claim independence in decision-making, to pretend there’s a wall between them and these departments. But let’s not kid ourselves. These walls are paper-thin. And more often than not, bad decisions especially the ones that bury accountability, are either taken or, at the very least, quietly cleared at the top.

Lana also turned to the Ombudsman’s Office, yet another internal mechanism that, in theory, is there to help staff navigate conflict and find resolution. But just like the Ethics Office, it turned out to be a symbolic structure with no power and no spine. She was met with the same institutional indifference, the same empty reassurances. Another dead end dressed up as support.

Every single department that is meant to protect staff, uphold ethics, and ensure accountability (Investigations, Legal, HR, Ethics, Ombudsman) is structurally subordinate to the very people they might need to investigate. In other words, they don’t just fail to protect staff: they are structurally incapable of doing so.

In Lana’s case, it wasn’t just the Investigations Office that shut the door. It was the same office that refused to revise the new evidence she submitted, evidence they never properly reviewed in the first place and worse, they closed the case while quietly inserting new allegations against her. The victim.

And it didn’t stop there.

It was both the Legal Department and the HR Department that offered Lana a significant sum of hush money, on the condition that she withdraw the new evidence and drop her case from the UN Tribunal.

Now I’ve seen cases where a staff member is offered some kind of package: when there’s a performance issue, personality clashes, restructuring, or simply a dead end at work. These things happen. But hush money in a sexual harassment case? In the UN?

That’s a whole different story. And if this is now an accepted or even defendable practice by the UN’s legal departments, then the Secretary-General has a serious problem on his hands. Because the next time he repeats that tired line about “zero tolerance” for sexual harassment, Member States should ask him one thing: 

Since when does zero tolerance come with a price tag?

It’s not just the departments supposedly tasked with upholding the UN’s zero tolerance policy that are busy handing out hush money, now it seems the practice has spread. Contagious, even. Because the latest to follow suit? None other than the UN Tribunal itself.

In an outrageous and telling move, the UN Dispute Tribunal itself: yes, the body created to be independent issued an order that referenced the General Assembly’s encouragement of alternative dispute resolution. The judge then invited the parties to “explore the possibility” of resolving the dispute amicably, without further litigation and reaching an “amicable settlement”.

Excuse me?

What kind of justice is that? Since when is hush money an “amicable resolution” to sexual harassment? What happened to accountability? To dignity? What message does this send to every other woman in the UN system who is being harassed right now?

What about Lana’s mental health?

Her safety?

Her career?

And what about the women who remain behind in that office? Do they not deserve protection from a known perpetrator? What duty of care is being exercised here by UNICEF leadership, Legal, HR or the Tribunal, for that matter?

So what does this say about the UN’s broader approach to sexual exploitation and abuse of beneficiaries? If an international staff member with 15 years of service can be bought off, silenced, and pushed out for reporting abuse, then what chance does a refugee woman or a malnourished girl in a conflict zone have?

What does it take to silence them? 

A plastic toy? 

A bag of rice?

Lana’s case is emblematic of a much darker truth: the UN has mastered the art of making victims disappear, while keeping perpetrators comfortably in place.

The truth is, when you’re not in power in this system; especially when you’re a woman, you are invisible. You are disposable. And if you remind them that your dignity is not for sale, they will make sure you no longer exist in the organization.

They do not see you.
They do not hear you.
And they certainly do not protect you.

What they do protect, at all costs, is each other.

Because let’s face it: no one is really interested in hearing your story, especially if it’s a story about sexual harassment or abuse. What they want is simple. Make it go away. Bury it. Discredit it. Pay it off. Anything but face it.