On 21 September 2025, one day before the opening of the General Assembly marking the 80th Anniversary of the United Nations, the Secretary-General sent a broadcast to all UN Secretariat staff in which he threatened disciplinary action against staff who express personal views, whether in public statements, private fora, or on social media, if those views are deemed inconsistent with the Organization’s official position.
The broadcast, titled “Guidance on Personal Communications – Reminder”, reiterates staff duties under Staff Regulation 1.2(f) and the UN Ethics Office’s 2025 Guidance on Political Activities. It cautions staff to exercise restraint in their personal communications, including on private social media, reminding them that any expression, whether through posts, likes, or shares, must not conflict with the Organization’s interests or adversely reflect on their status as international civil servants. Crucially, it directs staff to ensure their communications on current crises and political matters are “consistent with the position of the Organization and the statements of the Secretary-General.” The warning is clear: non-compliance may trigger disciplinary proceedings, leading to sanctions
The SG’s message in the broadcast was unambiguous:
“Failure to do so can result in the initiation of a disciplinary process, which may result in disciplinary sanctions being imposed.”
This comes as no surprise, as the Secretary-General bends yet again to Israeli and U.S. pressure to muzzle the voices of UN staff. This manufactured silence projects a false image of consent, an image designed to shield Israel from the reality of staff dissent.
Over the past weeks, many staff have confided in me that they are retreating into silence, not out of conviction, but out of fear. Fear of losing their jobs, their salaries, their stability. I understand this deeply: they have families to sustain, obligations they cannot abandon, and many are already serving in conflict zones, enduring hardship and danger as part of their daily reality
What is new, however, is the extent to which the United Nations is willing to bend to external pressure, prepared to silence and even dismiss its own staff in order to appease two Member States, one of which is openly and actively committing a genocide and boasting of it at the podium of the General Assembly.
In 1994, during the genocide in Rwanda, there was no social media, and staff openly debated opposing views. Neutrality as a principle of international civil service already existed, but there was no talk of staff being disciplined for expressing opinions or engaging in such debates. This rigid and punitive interpretation has only been aggressively imposed in the past decade, mainly under pressure from Israel and the US.
Neutrality as a principle of international civil service already existed, but there was no notion of staff discipline being invoked against those who spoke their mind. That rigid and punitive interpretation of neutrality is a more recent phenomenon one that, over the past decade, has been aggressively driven by Israel and its donors.
In my twenty years of service across the UN system, deployed around the globe and responsible for enforcing compliance with the Code of Conduct, I had never encountered neutrality being used in this way. Not once did it become an issue with staff until I joined UNRWA. It was there that neutrality began to be systematically weaponized, not as a principle of balance, but as a tool to silence and punish dissent
It began with UNRWA, where students were forbidden from drawing maps of Palestine or their homeland under the pretext of neutrality, with U.S. donors threatening to cut funds unless such drawings were erased from UNRWA school halls. From there, the campaign escalated into systematic monitoring of UNRWA staff social media accounts, with weekly reports sent to management demanding disciplinary action. Many staff were dismissed as a result. And today, that same model is being extended to UN Headquarters staff in Geneva, New York, and across the system.
What began as pressure on one Agency has now become institutionalized across the entire United Nations system. This latest broadcast to all Secretariat staff is nothing more than the UN-wide extension of that same playbook: the silencing, disciplining, and dismissal of staff under the banner of “neutrality.”
So, under this broadcast, if a staff member states that Israel is killing thousands in Gaza, starving millions, or violating international humanitarian law, they risk being accused of breaching neutrality and subjected to disciplinary action even dismissal.
And yet, let us pause here and recall the Secretary-General’s own words. The SG is not only a political figure. He is also the Chief Administrative Officer of the United Nations, and from that very position, he has spoken those exact words at the podium of the General Assembly.
On 22 September, in his remarks to the General Assembly marking the 80th Anniversary of the UN, he declared:
“As we meet, civilians are targeted, and international law trampled in Gaza.”
And on the same day, at the High-level International Conference on Palestine, he went further and said :
“….nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people or any form of ethnic cleansing.
The systematic decimation of Gaza.
The starvation of the population.
The killing of tens of thousands of civilians, most of them women and children, and hundreds of our own humanitarians.
Nothing can also excuse developments in the West Bank that pose an existential threat to a Two-State solution.
The relentless expansion of settlements.
The creeping threat of annexation.
The intensification of settler violence.
All of it must stop.
The situation is morally, legally and politically intolerable.”
Scathing remarks; brave even. So why is the Secretary-General allowed to voice what his conscience compels him to say to remain sane, while staff are forbidden from saying the very same words, under threat of dismissal?
The answer is straightforward: because the vast majority of UN staff oppose this genocide. If their voices were heard, public opinion would turn even more decisively against Israel. Proof of that is already visible in the General Assembly, where the mass walkouts during the Israeli Prime Minister’s speech spoke louder than any resolution.
One thing is certain: this is an extremely dangerous trend. The UN is now actively muzzling the voices of its own staff. By silencing its own staff, the United Nations entrenches complicity at its core.
Here is the catch: this broadcast, titled ‘Guidance on Personal Communications – Reminder’ (full text above), explicitly instructs staff that any personal communications, even on private social media, must align with the official position of the Organization. That ‘position,’ of course, is articulated by the Secretary-General himself, and his own words on 22 September leave no ambiguity about what that position is.
This is the contradiction in plain sight: staff are being threatened with dismissal unless they align their views with the Secretary-General’s official position, yet when they do exactly that, they are still silenced.
Why can the Secretary-General, as Chief Administrative Officer, speak publicly and denounce ethnic cleansing, starvation, and the trampling of international law, yet staff who echo his very words are punished, investigated, or even dismissed?
This contradiction institutionalizes censorship at the very heart of the United Nations and signals a dangerous erosion of the independence of its international civil service.
If the Secretary-General may speak truth to power, why are staff denied that same right?
Compared to the time of Kofi Annan, the United Nations under the current Secretary-General appears far more chaotic and directionless. Institutionally, the Organization feels like a colony, where the system — including its legal framework and highest governing bodies — seems to tolerate racism and silence staff voices.
At least Kofi Annan was willing to take a public stand, even on highly controversial issues such as the Iraq war. The current Secretary-General, by contrast, appears not only timid but also more concerned with protecting his own power as his term approaches its end in 2026, rather than defending the Organization’s principles of justice and integrity.