Following my recent post on “Inside UNHCR: Women Staff Speak Out”, I have now received additional correspondence sent to UNHCR senior leadership and the High Commissioner’s office.
This letter was sent to me by a group of women staff members working within the United Nations system. It was shared with me in confidence for publication after internal reporting channels were exhausted.
The correspondence raises deeply serious concerns regarding an alleged case of sexual harassment and violent workplace behaviour, reportedly supported by multiple testimonies, yet closed without sanctions while the victims remained exposed, unsupported, and at risk.
In today’s global climate where scandals are exposing how easily powerful men are protected by powerful systems, the United Nations should be expected to demonstrate a more active, victim-centred, and protective approach toward its own staff members who report sexual harassment and abuse.
What this letter suggests is the opposite: a system that appears to protect reputations and careers, while leaving those who spoke up to absorb the consequences alone.
Even more troubling are the concerns raised about the possible role of senior officials in enabling, legitimizing, or shielding the alleged misconduct, and about administrative decisions that may have preserved the employability of the alleged perpetrator.
The letter below is published in the public interest, with identifying information redacted to protect those involved.
Disclaimer: This letter is published at the request of its authors. I am not a party to the matters raised.
Following my open letter to the Secretary-General on Fabrice Aidan, we have received a minimal and highly partial answer through the Spokesperson of the Secretary-General during yesterday’s noon briefing at UNHQ. The response does not resolve the questions raised; instead, it introduces a contradiction that undermines the credibility of the UN’s position. The Spokesperson’s response is worth examining carefully and contains multiple inaccuracies, to say the least.
Question: My second question. There is a UN staff. His name is Fabrice Aidan, whose name had been mentioned several times in Epstein files. He was passing messages from UN email to Terje Rod-Larsen to Epstein. And you have received a letter, and the SG received a letter asking why he was not investigated. When some UN staff showed some sympathy for Palestinians, they were instructed…
Spokesman: Well, I mean…
Question: To be quiet. But this case…
Spokesman: Abdelhamid, it’s a very valid question, but I wish you’d get your facts right. Mr. Aidan is not a UN staff member. He was a French diplomat who was seconded to the United Nations from about 2003 to 2013. He resigned in April 2013. At the time of his resignation, there was a disciplinary process under way against him on a specific matter. Now like many people, I’ve looked at a lot of the Epstein documents, and I can tell you that obviously there was no way for us to be aware of, we don’t monitor staff’s emails, so we have no way of, or people’s emails, we have no way of knowing what people are doing with their emails. It is clear that looking at what was sent, it was violation of procedures to send from a UN email documents that he should not have been sharing outside of the UN.
Question: What about Terje Rod-Larsen? He was a UN staff, and you know he was. And… and also, Aidan was a UN staff, and he signed his letters as [cross-talk].
Spokesman: Right. But what is your point? Because I’m telling you, he has not worked in the United Nations since April 2013. He resigned. At the time of his resignation, he was under investigation. Mr. Larsen stopped being a full time UN staff member on 31 December 2004. He was then, when actually employed, or a dollar a year, envoy while he served as President of IPI. I can tell you that our focus and everybody’s focus should be on ensuring that everyone follows our procedures and, also, focused on the victims of Mr. Epstein.
The Spokesperson instructed the journalist to “get your facts right.” The facts are not in dispute. They are documented, public, and verifiable. What is in dispute is the UN’s attempt to reframe those facts through selective terminology and incomplete disclosure.
1- Seconded Personnel Remain Subject to UN Administrative Jurisdiction
The UN Staff Regulations and Rules explicitly contemplate secondments and arrangements whereby individuals serve within the Secretariat under a UN appointment while remaining linked to their government administration. In practice, these individuals receive an index number, occupy a post, exercise UN functions, and are subject to UN internal governance and conduct requirements.
A person seconded from a government does not become exempt from UN accountability simply because the salary originates elsewhere. A secondment does not create a parallel moral universe where UN ethics do not apply.
The UN itself has a clear administrative framework for this category of personnel. Accordingly, the attempt to present Mr. Aidan’s secondment as proof that he was “not UN staff” is misleading and has no bearing on the applicability of the UN’s Staff Regulations, Rules, and disciplinary jurisdiction.
2- The UN cannot deny staff status while invoking an internal OIOS disciplinary process
The Spokesperson’s answer collapses under its own weight in the very next sentence.
He claims Aidan was “not a UN staff member,” but then states:
“At the time of his resignation, there was a disciplinary process under way against him…”
An internal OIOS disciplinary process presupposes UN jurisdiction, and therefore UN staff status. Aidan was apparently not “not UN staff”, yet the UN confirms he was under an internal OIOS disciplinary process.
OIOS and the UN disciplinary framework exist to investigate alleged misconduct within the Organization and to ensure compliance with the Staff Regulations and Rules by staff members serving under UN authority.
Either Mr. Aidan was subject to a UN OIOS disciplinary process, or he was not.
The United Nations cannot simultaneously assert that an individual falls outside the staff system, while also confirming that the individual was subject to an internal OIOS disciplinary process. It presupposes UN administrative jurisdiction and applies to personnel serving under UN authority and bound by the Staff Regulations and Rules.
The UN cannot rely on the terminology of “secondment” to dilute or recharacterize accountability. Staff members seconded from government service or from other organizations remain subject to the UN regulatory framework, including the Staff Regulations and Rules and the Standards of Conduct for the International Civil Service. Secondment is an administrative modality; it does not constitute an exemption from UN obligations, nor does it remove an individual from the Organization’s disciplinary jurisdiction.
Mr. Aidan was not operating in a vacuum. He was serving as a full-time P-5 official within the UN Secretariat under a letter of appointment reflecting his secondment from the French Government. That administrative detail has no bearing whatsoever on the applicability of the UN’s internal legal framework to his conduct.
3- The Spokesperson confirmed the breach of UN confidentiality procedures
In the most consequential part of the briefing, the Spokesperson expressly acknowledged that the material transmitted from the official UN email account constituted a breach of UN procedures. He stated:
“It is clear that looking at what was sent, it was violation of procedures to send from a UN email documents that he should not have been sharing outside of the UN.”
This statement amounts to a public confirmation by the UN Secretariat that the correspondence released in the Epstein files reflects an unauthorized disclosure of internal UN documents. the Secretariat itself has acknowledged that the conduct was incompatible with UN rules governing confidentiality and the handling of official information.
4- Terje Rød-Larsen: the UN’s own rules on gratis personnel prohibit precisely this conduct
The Spokesperson further attempted to neutralize Mr. Terje Rød-Larsen’s involvement by emphasizing that he ceased to be a full-time UN staff member on 31 December 2004 and later served as a “dollar-a-year” envoy while he served as President of IPI. This distinction is legally irrelevant. Whether staff or non-staff, Mr. Rød-Larsen was operating under UN authority and entrusted with access to sensitive information. The applicable obligations of confidentiality and discretion therefore remained fully engaged.
The Spokesperson’s explanation does not exonerate Mr. Rød-Larsen. On the contrary, it confirms that he continued to operate within the UN system under an engagement modality that falls squarely within the Organization’s administrative framework governing non-staff personnel.
The applicable instrument is ST/AI/1999/6 (Gratis personnel), which governs individuals serving within UN offices while not holding a standard staff appointment. The instruction is explicit: such personnel are bound by UN rules on confidentiality and are prohibited from communicating non-public information to external persons.
Section 11.2 of ST/AI/1999/6 provides:
“Gratis personnel shall exercise the utmost discretion in all matters relating to their functions. Unless otherwise authorized by the appropriate official in the receiving office, they may not communicate at any time to the media or to any institution, person, Government or other external authority any information that has not been made public, and which has become known to them by reason of their association with the United Nations or the receiving office.
They may not use any such information without the written authorization of the appropriate official, and such information may never be used for personal gain. These obligations shall continue after the end of their service with the United Nations.”
Accordingly, even assuming arguendo that Mr. Rød-Larsen’s engagement was on a “dollar-a-year” basis, the UN’s own administrative instructions make clear that he remained bound by strict confidentiality obligations. The transmission of Security Council briefings, internal diplomatic readouts, and privileged conversations, or other non-public UN information to an external private individual would constitute a direct breach of the applicable UN regulatory framework.
The Secretariat’s attempt to emphasize Mr. Rød-Larsen’s contractual modality therefore does not constitute an explanation. It underscores the institutional failure: individuals operating under UN authority, whether staff or gratis personnel, appear to have been able to transmit sensitive information externally over an extended period without effective oversight, accountability, or transparent consequences.
5- UNESCO’s subsequent recruitment of Fabrice Aidan is indefensible
It is now established that the UN Secretariat introduced an explicit, systematized mechanism for recording misconduct-related separations through ST/AI/2017/1 (26 October 2017), which provides for a “note to file” in the Official Status File when a staff member resigns before completion of disciplinary proceedings.
ClearCheck was subsequently introduced as a system-wide vetting mechanism in 2018.
But even before ClearCheck existed, every UN entity had a duty to conduct meaningful reference checks and consult prior UN service records.
And yet, Fabrice Aidan reportedly was reemployed by UNESCO under Audray Azoulay’s leadership between 2019 and 2023.
This raises the unavoidable question: how was a person who resigned from the UN Secretariat in 2013 while under a full-fledged disciplinary process later allowed to return to the UN system?
Who facilitated his recruitment and how?
6- Information Governance and Internal Security Controls
While it is fully accepted that the United Nations does not and should not engage in indiscriminate monitoring of staff email communications, this does not absolve the Organization of its duty to maintain effective governance, information security controls, and safeguards over the handling of privileged and confidential material.
The transmission of Security Council briefings, internal diplomatic readouts, and sensitive documentation is not an administrative triviality: it is precisely the type of information that should be protected through clear access controls, classification protocols, audit mechanisms, and enforceable confidentiality procedures.
If such material can be repeatedly extracted from official UN channels and transmitted externally over an extended period without detection, mitigation, or consequence, the issue is no longer limited to individual misconduct, it reflects a systemic failure of internal oversight and information governance
Finally, it is difficult to ignore the Spokesperson’s attempt to close the exchange by suggesting that “everybody’s focus should be… on the victims of Mr. Epstein.”
No one disputes the centrality of the victims in this criminal case. However, coming from the United Nations, this statement is disingenuous. The UN has repeatedly failed to adopt a genuinely victim-centred approach in its own internal misconduct cases, particularly those involving harassment and sexual abuse.
The Organization continues to receive and systematically mishandle countless reports from staff members, disproportionately women, many of whom refrain from reporting altogether due to well-founded fear of retaliation, and many of whom did report only to see their cases buried without meaningful consequence for perpetrators.
The UN should begin by demonstrating accountability towards its own internal victims before invoking “victim-centred” rhetoric as a means of deflecting legitimate questions of institutional responsibility.
It is also important to underscore that thousands of UN staff members are dismayed by the Fabrice Aidan case precisely because it stands in stark contrast to the stringent disciplinary measures routinely applied to ordinary staff members for minor deviations, perceived reputational issues, or administrative technicalities. Staff members are sanctioned, separated, or threatened for far less. Yet in this case, the documented misuse of official UN channels to transmit sensitive information externally appears to have unfolded over years with no transparent accountability.
This disparity raises serious questions not only about oversight and information governance, but also about vetting, institutional protection, privileged access, and the unequal application of rules within the Organization. It reinforces a perception widely shared among staff: that UN accountability is not applied uniformly, and that those embedded in elite networks or connected to influential figures are treated under a different standard than the workforce expected to comply without exception.
The United Nations can do better and must do better.
Today, I sent an open letter to the UN Secretary-General with one straightforward question: was Fabrice Aidan ever investigated while serving as a staff member of the UN Secretariat, in light of the DOJ-released Epstein correspondence and recent French reporting?
If the UN did investigate and took disciplinary action, then how was Aidan later able to re-enter the UN system and work at UNESCO between 2019 and 2023?
Was his record ever entered into ClearCheck: the UN’s system-wide screening mechanism meant to prevent the rehiring of individuals linked to misconduct?
And if the UN did not investigate, then what exactly did the Secretariat do when it was reportedly informed in 2013 of an FBI report concerning his alleged conduct?
If the UN did not investigate, it must explain why
If the UN did investigate, it must disclose the outcome.
The United Nations cannot claim to uphold rules it applies selectively. Accountability cannot be something imposed on the powerless while those embedded in elite networks are shielded from scrutiny.
Continued silence will only confirm what many staff have learned through experience: governance, ethics, and accountability operate in one direction only: downward.
In IOM, a Chief of Mission has been sexually harassing a dozen female staff members, with the former Director General covering for him.
More than a dozen United Nations IOM female staff members filed independent complaints of sexual harassment against a current Chief of Mission.
The former Director General was formally apprised of these complaints, yet he took no action.
The PSEA focal point, entrusted with protecting victims and ensuring reporting of sexual misconduct, actively discouraged the complainants by stating
“If I had suffered sexual harassment by a senior staff member, I would not report it.”
The IOM Ombudsman did not fare any better, instead turning a blind eye.
The IOM sexual harasser continued in his functions as if nothing had happened.
Several staff members subsequently began experiencing retaliation in different forms.
When the Internal Office of Investigations finally decided to launch an investigation, many of the complainants chose to withdraw their complaints out of fear of being identified through their testimonies, even where anonymity was supposedly guaranteed.
The investigation was unfortunately protracted, to the detriment of many staff members, some of whom chose to leave the Organization altogether. At the same time, the IOM sexual harasser remains very much in place and without concern.
More worryingly, a 2022 External Evaluation of IOM’s Approach to Protection Against Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and Sexual Harassment noted in its final report a deeply troubling approach to dealing with sexual harassment at IOM with the report presenting an encouraging view that some forms of sexual harassment could be addressed through management action, or for informal mediation by the Office of Ombudsperson should the affected individual choose not to pursue a formal investigation.
This approach does not dissuade perpetrators from continuing predatory behavior. On the contrary, it has proven largely ineffective and extremely damaging. The dozens of women who complained in this case reached out to the former Director General, to the PSEA focal point, and to the Ombudsman. None of these actors deemed it necessary to stop the aberrant behavior.
When she assumed her functions as the new Director General of the International Organization for Migration on 1 October 2023, Amy Pope, the first woman to lead IOM in its history, stated in her speech:
“I pledge that IOM will put at its highest priority protecting the women and girls we serve.”
It is time to practice what you preach. The continued presence of a Chief of Mission accused by multiple female staff members of sexual harassment, after years of inaction, retaliation, and institutional failure, cannot be reconciled with it.
Amy Pope, the moment for statements has passed.
Accountability now requires immediate and decisive action.
In the wake of the open letter recently published from a feminist collective of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency staff documenting two years of unresolved complaints involving intimidation, aggression, and a hostile work environment, and pointing to institutional failures across oversight, ethics, and human resources functions, I was contacted by aUNHCR junior staff member who wished to support the concerns raised.
The UNHCR staff member came forward to support the collective’s concerns and shared their official exit interview. I am publishing a summarized and redacted version of that testimony to protect anonymity.
While personal in nature, the account closely and independently corroborates the allegations made by the UNHCR collective of female staff, describing a work environment marked by harassment, intimidation, aggression, abuse of authority, humiliation, the absence of effective protection mechanisms, and a hostile work environment that ultimately led to resignation.
Taken together, these testimonies paint a grim picture of a toxic work culture within parts of UNHCR, where harassment and abuse of authority permeate the environment systematically.
The exit interview includes the following account:
“My manager shouted directly in my face and threw a folder containing World Refugee Day documents at me.”
That this incident involved World Refugee Day materials is difficult to ignore. It underscores the widening gap between the values UNHCR publicly promotes and the treatment experienced by staff behind closed doors and raises an uncomfortable question about what happens when dignity is not practiced internally.
At this point, it is fair to ask whether UNHCR’s exit interviews serve any purpose beyond documenting harm after staff have already left.
This open letter was entrusted to me for publication by a group of women staff members working within the United Nations system.
It is formally addressed to Mr. Barham Salih, the newly appointed High Commissioner for UNHCR. The same concerns and supporting material were raised repeatedly over the past two years with his predecessor, Mr. Filippo Grandi, and were copied to the Secretary-General and senior UN leadership, without resulting action.
Written after the exhaustion of all internal mechanisms, the letter raises serious concerns about impunity, institutional silence, and failures of accountability within UNHCR, including the roles of oversight, ethics, and human resources functions.
I am sharing it in the interest of transparency, accountability, and informed public discussion.
*Disclaimer: This letter is published at the request of the authors. I am not a party to the matters raised.
The Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, is presiding over the deliberate dismantling of the Agency by terminating Palestinian staff en masse under false administrative pretexts in the final weeks of his mandate.
In Gaza today, acting on his direct instructions, letters of termination are being issued withimmediate effectto more than 620 Palestinian teachers, staff who were suspended less than a year ago and deliberately placed into financial asphyxiation through so-called “exceptional leave.” They were removed from work, stripped of income, isolated from their duties, and left in enforced precarity. The same justification recycled without shame is nothing but the ongoing financial crisis.
The termination letters that we have seen and verified assert that
“after careful review, the Commissioner-General has decided, pursuant to Staff Regulation 9.1, to terminate in the interest of the Agency the contracts of staff,”
mechanically appending expressions of “regret” before declaring that employment is terminated “with immediate effect.”
These expressions are false. Each of them. The assertions of “careful review,” “regret,” and “the interest of the Agency” are not merely misleading; they are knowingly untrue and will be exposed before the UN Tribunal. The termination notices rely on formulaic language to mask decisions taken in bad faith, in advance, and for an improper purpose.
The invocation of “the interest of the Agency” is being used to justify the unlawful elimination of Palestinian staff. The claim of “careful review” conceals predetermined outcomes since February 2025. The expression of “regret” serves no legal function other than to cosmetically accompany an otherwise brutal administrative act. These terms are, in fact, misrepresentations deployed to manufacture legality where none exists. Their purpose is to insulate them from accountability, judicial scrutiny, and responsibility.
For twelve consecutive years, UNRWA has operated with an annual deficit ranging between USD 100 to 120 million. At no point during those twelve years was the mass termination of Palestinian staff advanced as a corrective measure. Not because it was overlooked, but because it was never a legitimate option.
UNRWA’s deficit is not an anomaly; it is a known, structural, and politically sustained condition. Donor states have long accepted, indeed, engineered a model in which the Agency functions under permanent financial shortfall. Savings measures, austerity cycles, hiring freezes, and programmatic compression have never eliminated that deficit, nor were they intended to. Yet the Agency has continued to operate, deliver services, and fulfill its mandate every single year under those conditions.
Nothing changed in January 2026 except the decision to terminate hundreds of Palestinian staff in Gaza, Jordan, and soon in Lebanon.
The mandate of UNRWA is not discretionary expenditure. It is a legal obligation to employ Palestinian refugees to serve Palestinian refugees across education, health, relief, protection, infrastructure, and microfinance. For those unaware: staffing with Palestinian refugees is not ancillary to the mandate; it is the mandate.
The termination of teachers is therefore not a budgetary adjustment. It is a deliberate act of mandate dismantlement, executed under the false pretense of financial necessity. What is being reduced is not cost, but Palestinian presence.
The Commissioner-General has no legal or moral authority to hollow out the mandate of UNRWA under the guise of financial management. Authority to administer the Agency does not include authority to dismantle it, and the CG’s budgetary discretion does not extend to extinguishing the very purpose for which the Agency exists.
The obscenity of these decisions is entrenched in the hierarchy that sustains them. The Acting Director in Gaza, a white Western European male installed through a procedurally unlawful appointment in direct violation of governing rules, as confirmed by an investigation under the Secretary-General’s authority, continues to occupy his position without consequence, earning over USD 17,000 per month,while terminating Palestinian teachers whose monthly salaries barely reach USD 1,000.
The administration now invokes urgency, inevitability, and the alleged absence of alternatives. None withstands scrutiny. The financial conditions cited are longstanding and well-known, and the timing exposes the design. Terminations are being carried out while collective appeals challenging the unlawful suspensions remain pending before the Tribunal, and while the Commissioner-General is approaching the end of his mandate.
More than 420 of these teachers have already filed a collective appeal with the UN Tribunal, challenging the legality of their suspensions and the denial of their salaries. The Commissioner-General’s sudden acceleration toward termination is nothing but a calculated attempt to render pending appeals moot by invoking Staff Regulation 9.1 and declaring, after careful review, that their contracts are ended in the interest of the Agency. Decisions are being rushed to pre-empt judicial review and to entrench faits accomplis before accountability can attach.
This is, in fact, the opening phase of a broader strategy that extends across UNRWA’s fields of operation, staff categories, and duty stations. The pattern is already replicating.
In Amman last Thursday, the Director of Security, another white Western European male whose appointment was also contested before the UN Tribunal, issued termination letters to 20 Palestinian security staff, barring them from UNRWA premises with immediate effect. Staff were informed that their functions would be outsourced to a private security company in order to “align with the rest of the UN system.”
That justification does not withstand even minimal legal scrutiny.
UNRWA is not a generic UN entity. Its mandate is singular and non-transferable: to employ Palestinian refugees in the service of Palestinian refugees. The outsourcing of Palestinian security functions to private contractors constitutes an ultra vires action. It exceeds administrative authority by displacing Palestinian staff from posts that are integral to UNRWA’s mandate. Procurement is being misused as a vehicle to achieve an outcome that management could not lawfully impose directly: the systematic exclusion of Palestinians from their own institution.
The invocation of “alignment” functions as a pretext to legitimize discriminatory impact, whereby Palestinian staff are removed en masse while senior international positions remain untouched. The financial disparity is undisguised. The Director of Security earns between USD 12,000 and 13,000 per month. The Palestinian staff he terminated earn approximately USD 800 per month. Senior management positions remain untouched; Palestinian livelihoods are declared expendable.
The moral arithmetic speaks for itself.
In Beirut, preparations are underway for the same maneuver. Approximately 100 Palestinian staffare expected to face termination under identical pretexts, using the same administrative language and the same manufactured justifications.
These measures are being executed at the very beginning of the year, and in the final weeks preceding the Commissioner-General’s departure at the end of March, the formal conclusion of his contract. This is the terminal phase of a policy implemented with the knowledge that accountability will soon be evaded through exit.
Following the closure of UNRWA’s Jerusalem headquarters, the dismantling has shifted inward. Field offices and headquarters are now being systematically hollowed out through attrition, termination, and outsourcing. The pattern is consistent, sequential, and intentional. This trajectory mirrors, with precision, the long-articulated objective of the Israeli government: the dismantling of UNRWA not through formal abolition, but through internal erosion: reducing staff, extinguishing functions, and stripping the Agency of its Palestinian core while preserving the façade of institutional continuity.
What is unfolding is a systematic, progressive, controlled disintegration.
When the Commissioner-General assumed office, UNRWA’s staffing table reflected approximately 31,000 Palestinian staff positions, including 13,000 in Gaza. These figures are still cited publicly, with confidence and repetition.
They are false.
Insider data confirms that UNRWA’s staffing has fallen to approximately 23,000 positions. Posts have been abolished incrementally and without transparency, with the most severe acceleration occurring over the past two years. In Gaza alone, staff numbers have collapsed from 13,000 to approximately 9,000, a consequence of deaths caused by Israeli attacks, forced retirements, and now, deliberate mass termination.
The plan is no longer deniable.
UNRWA is being dismantled from within by a senior Western European management cohort that continues to invoke humanitarian language while administering collective punishment against Palestinians, many of whom are simultaneously mourning family members killed by the very government whose political objectives these measures now advance.
No Western European Director or senior official within UNRWA has demonstrated the moral courage to halt these actions. None has objected. None has refused to execute them. These officials retain their positions by implementing decisions without scrutiny or resistance. Their allegiance is not to the mandate, nor to Palestinian refugees, but to institutional survival. In that sense, they operate as mercenaries: well compensated, insulated from consequences, and valued only for their willingness to comply.
As for the Commissioner-General, he has nothing to lose. His term ends in March 2026. His exit is secured. The same is likely true for those closest to him. Decisions are taken with the certainty that consequences will not follow. Quite the opposite: they are likely to be rewarded; absorbed into other senior roles, compensated by Western governments that continue to support Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people, and repositioned within the UN system to carry forward the same discriminatory practices under different institutional banners.
The decision to terminate 650 Palestinian staff in a single day, taken in the final weeks of the Commissioner-General’s tenure, is unprecedented in the history of both the United Nations and UNRWA. Such a measure: massive in scale, irreversible in effect, and executed at the very end of an executive mandate, raises serious questions about the continued propriety of allowing the Commissioner-General to exercise unfettered executive authority. When a senior official accelerates irreversible decisions at this scale immediately before departure, the issue is no longer administrative discretion but abuse of authority in anticipation of exit.
This conduct warrants scrutiny not only of the decision itself, but of the conditions under which it was taken. Reasonable questions arise as to whether assurances have been given, whether consequences have been neutralized in advance, and whether accountability has been effectively suspended. In any other institutional context, such circumstances would trigger immediate restraint, oversight, or the withdrawal of delegated authority.
Where, then, is the Secretary-General of the United Nations in all of this? What justification exists for permitting a departing Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, to take decisions of historic magnitude in the final months of his tenure, with consequences that will long outlast his presence and fall entirely on Palestinian staff?
In mythology, when power abandoned humanity, it was Prometheus who defied it, who stole fire knowing the cost, not for recognition, not for permission, but because survival demanded action. He did not wait for consensus. He acted because inaction meant destruction.
Who, then, will act for Palestinian UNRWA staff?
Who will defy the machinery rather than continue to service it? Who will intervene when legality is being weaponized and procedure is being used to erase livelihoods?
Palestinian UNRWA staff are being erased while the world watches it happen in real time. Some are burying their families. Others are sleeping in shelters. And now they are being told, formally, politely, with immediate effect, that even their livelihoods are no longer allowed to survive.
This is how a mandate is killed: quietly, disingenuously, and from within, by the very official, Mr. Lazzarini, charged with safeguarding it, in direct violation of the oath attached to his office.
So where is Prometheus now? Who will defy power when survival demands it, rather than administer harm in its name?
The humanitarian system rests on a single, non-negotiable premise: do no harm. What is unfolding here is its deliberate inversion: do more harm. Terminate more Palestinian staff. Remove livelihoods. Deepen displacement. Align administrative decisions with the Israeli government’s long-stated objective of dismantling UNRWA and reducing the Palestinian presence in Gaza.
Yes: Do More Harm: Systematically and with Intent: One Termination Letter At A Time.
Not because it is lawful. Not because it is unavoidable. But because those authorizing it are insulated from its consequences, and because they calculate that Palestinian lives, Palestinian labour, and Palestinian rights can be extinguished administratively without cost.
This is how senior officials like Lazzarini participate in erasure: by choosing harm, authorizing it on paper, and enforcing it without ever having to fire a single shot.
Palestinians will remember you because you failed to protect them, failed to uphold the mandate entrusted to you, and willingly chose to inflict harm upon them, no different, in the end, from those who openly act as their enemy.
“I would not let the UN teach me morals. Having a baby in Africa is nothing. Where one has a baby, she wanted a baby. How many people have babies here? The UN does not understand that. The UN thinks that she has been victimized by the UN staff who came. No, it’s the opposite.”
This was the shocking statement of a MONUSCO international staff member to the UN tribunal after he was dismissed for sexual exploitation and abuse of a local woman in Goma.
Last week, the UNDT rendered a damning judgment UNDT/2025/089, Compaore v. Secretary-General, which evidences a systemic collapse of compliance with the principle of “do no harm” among UN international staff and highlights the widening gap between the Organisation’s proclaimed norms and its operational realities.
What the Tribunal recounts next reveals a level of predation that documents the institutional inability to give effect to every policy, every training, and every public assertion that the Organisation upholds the principle of ‘do no harm”.
“The staff member met the local woman when she was selling vegetables on the roadside in Goma took her number and, within days, he was having regular sexual intercourse with her.
He knew that there was a notable status differential between him, an international United Nations staff member and the SEA survivor, a seller on the market in Goma.
The woman earned between USD 10 and USD 25 per month… she was also supporting her ten-year-old son. By contrast, the staff member’s net salary was approximately USD 14,000 per month.
He visited her at her house and started giving her significant sums of money up to half of her month’s earnings as well as promised to help opening her own business…
…when the victim informed him that she became pregnant as a result, he reacted angrily, and called her a ‘prostitute’ and ‘thief,’ telling her to leave his house.
He then took the local woman far to meet with a pharmacist that he knew, using a UN vehicle. At the location of the pharmacist, he asked her to do a pregnancy test, which was positive.
He then asked the pharmacist how they could arrange an abortion even though the local woman informed him that she did not want to abort. He then organized a meeting at a hotel in Goma, during which the pharmacist pressured the local woman to get an abortion; and he gave her US$ 400.00 (i.e. the equivalent of four months’ income or seven months’ rent for her) to financially incentivize her to get an abortion.
After giving her the money for an abortion, he filed a criminal complaint against her, accusing her of harassing him and of claiming money from him. In his complaint, he requested the police to verify if she was still pregnant, while being aware that abortion is a criminal offence in the DRC.
He then made the local woman sign an agreement in exchange of USD 8,000 payment. As part of this agreement, the local woman also signed a letter withdrawing allegations against him which were then pending in the local court.”
I mean if this is the outcome of years of UN training on “do no harm” then we are forced to confront the undeniable truth: something is not merely broken: something is rotten at the core. And perhaps the deeper tragedy is this: people have become so accustomed to this pattern of abuse that they have grown desensitized to it. These cases no longer shock; they are absorbed as routine background noise.
We must ask ourselves: who is reading these stories? Who is outraged? And why is this not shaking the Organisation to its foundations?
What is truly galling is that the international staff member stood before the Tribunal and insisted the relationship was consensual. The Tribunal, drawing on Makeen 2024-UNAT-1461, para. 52, citing Lucchini rejected this narrative entirely, establishing that in the face of glaring economic deprivation and an overwhelming power differential, genuine consent was impossible. Sex in such a situation is inherently coercive and any claimed consent collapses under legal and ethical scrutiny.
The Tribunal also held that the survivor’s “withdrawal of the complaints in domestic proceedings, following an $8,000 financial settlement,” does not absolve the perpetrator nor constrain the UN’s authority to act, since national acquittals do not extinguish administrative responsibility.
The staff member disputed the proportionality of his dismissal, arguing that a mere reprimand or censure would have sufficed. This position attempts to recast predatory conduct as a correctable misjudgment rather than misconduct of such severity that it renders continued employment untenable. It is a defence that collapses on its face when measured against the Organisation’s core obligations and basic standards of conduct.
The problem is just like the genocide in Palestine, people have become used to harm so much that these stories pass almost unremarkable. And the UN surely counts on this.
The Secretary-General’s report reduces survivors to numerical entries processed through a statistical frame that neutralizes emotional and moral response. As with the enumeration of Palestinian casualties, human beings are converted into data units. Numerical abstraction becomes the mechanism of desensitization.
Let me give you a few examples of what the dashboard reveals. Under the category of UN staff and related personnel:
Less than a week ago, on 20 and 21 November, two separate allegations were recorded against WHO personnel for sexual exploitation.
On 30 October, an allegation was filed against IOM for rape of a child by a UN Volunteer.
On 23, 21 and 20 October, three distinct allegations were filed for sexual assault of children under 18 in both IOM and UNRWA.
According to the same data, for 2024, children constituted 15% of victims, and disturbingly, an additional 17% were listed as “victim age unknown.” That alone illustrates how incomplete or deliberately under-specified the reporting is. For the same year, rape accounted for 13% of allegations, and sexual assault 20%. Assistance was provided in only 20% of cases, with the remainder categorized on the dashboard as “victim declined,” “victim did not seek assistance,” “victim unidentified,” or “victim unreachable.” This is the measure in practice of “do no harm” and of the supposed restoration of victims’ dignity.
Then there is the separate category of implementing partners whose personnel are not formally under UN authority but who execute UN-funded projects.
On 4, 8, 9, 19 and 28 November 2025, five allegations were lodged for sexual assault, two involving children under 18 in connection with UNICEF-supported activities.
On 9, 14, 16 and 19 October 2025, another four allegations were recorded, three of which were also for assault of children under 18, again linked to UNICEF-related projects.
I mean yes, these individuals are not UN staff; they are personnel of implementing partners. But the question is unavoidable: is the UN exercising due diligence over the entities it entrusts with its mandate?
Does the UN engage implementing partners to improve conditions for children, or are these partnerships, through negligence or indifference, creating new avenues for their abuse?
In 2025 so far, there have been 41 allegations of rape, of which 37 involved children under 18. These were linked to projects implemented for:
UNICEF (14)
WFP (13)
WHO (4)
UNOPS (4)
UNHCR (3)
OCHA (1)
In 2024, children under 18 accounted for at least 28% of all SEA allegations and that figure is conservative, given that an additional 24% of victims were listed as “age unknown.”
Rape constituted 12% of total allegations that year.
Then there is the category of peacekeeping and special political missions, where rape of children is clearly systemic. It is easier to avert one’s gaze, but perhaps this is precisely where scrutiny must intensify.
And here I am also analyzing numbers. This is the trap inherent in quantitative reporting: patterns and ratios take over, and the individual victims disappear. Behind each statistic is a life: a child with a name, a family, a history, a future now fractured.
Who explains to a 10-year-old boy that he will be alright after being raped? Who provides care and schooling for a child born of sexual exploitation? Who treats the psychological, physical, and social scars inflicted by those who arrived under the blue flag claiming protection?
Why are we still here? Why are we reading these findings while maintaining the fiction that the UN enforces a zero-tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and abuse? Each year we hear the same prescriptions: more funding, more training, more risk-mapping, more awareness. Yet the same patterns recur.
The Secretary-General’s report to the General Assembly is extensive and data-heavy, but this is precisely the problem: its architecture buries the actual crisis under layers of metrics and operational jargon. And there, almost unnoticed in the middle of the document, sits the real revelation:
In 2024, 64,585 United Nations staff members responded to the annual perception survey on protection from sexual exploitation and abuse. Of those, 3.65% (2,360 people) stated that it was acceptable to pay for sex, and close to 1% (555) indicated that it was acceptable to engage in sexual activity with a child, with one-third of those respondents occupying supervisory roles.
This alone reveals how embedded and normalized the culture of sexual exploitation and abuse has become within the UN and this does not even account for uniformed personnel, national police contingents, or military forces contributed by Member States to peacekeeping missions.
So why is the situation not improving and in several respects deteriorating? Policies are revised, bulletins updated, special coordination units created, but the real deficit lies in accountability, and not only accountability for the direct perpetrator.
And what about the perpetrators who are shielded rather than sanctioned? What about the cases quietly buried because they involve personnel with the right connections or the right nationality? What about internal directives to “avoid reputational exposure” that override the rights of victims?
The UN pursues low-level offenders as symbolic sacrifices while preserving the machinery that protects enablers, decision-makers, and silent bystanders. The Organization reports terminations as proof of resolve, yet accountability is never directed at those within HR, Legal, Ethics, or senior management who intervened to suppress complaints, stall proceedings, or intimidate victims. That is where the deeper accountability lies, and that is precisely where none is exercised.
Why is there no scrutiny of the senior officials who instruct HR and Legal to make cases “go away”? What about the victims who never report, either out of fear or because the system has taught them that nothing will happen? What about the managers whose first instinct is to protect their own reporting profile before the Security Council or the General Assembly? And what of the Legal and HR officers who invoke “insufficient evidence” as a procedural shield as though the absence of formal proof were not itself often the product of investigative indifference or institutional suppression?
The Secretary-General’s own report acknowledges that since 2006, approximately 750 paternity and child support claims arising from UN peace operations have been recorded with over 500 still unresolved. Most Member States have failed to take any meaningful steps toward resolution. Meanwhile, the children born of these abuses, many now approaching adulthood, remain without schooling, without healthcare, without legal recognition, and trapped in lifelong stigma. They live in conditions of uncertainty and marginalization, the direct human legacy of UN negligence.
Protracted investigation and disciplinary timelines are cited as “systemic challenges,” but they function as structural impediments to justice. Delays in inquiry, opaque handling of outcomes, and the absence of visible consequences reinforce a culture of impunity and corrode the Organization’s credibility. Even now, there remains no real accountability for those in leadership who failed in their obligation to act. The burden falls only on the isolated offender, never on those who enabled, ignored, or suppressed the cases.
Alarmingly, in 2024, the internal survey itself recorded a stark indicator of institutional distrust: 6% of UN respondents,roughly 3,700 staff expressed no confidence in leadership’s ability to address sexual exploitation and abuse, up from 3% the previous year.The doubling reflects a measurable deterioration in trust in leadership.
The reality we must confront is this: a child in Bangui may flee from what he perceives as the threat (the militia or armed group) and run instead toward the UN blue helmets, whom he believes to be protectors. But the risk now is that he runs straight into the arms of his abuser. The UN’s personnel (civilian and military) leverage the UN’s image as a guardian and savior to secure access to vulnerable populations. They weaponize the very trust invested in the UN.
This is what makes the situation intolerable: the UN is not a bystander to these violations but the mechanism through which access to victims is enabled. When trust itself becomes the instrument of abuse, the UN mission has already failed at its fundamental duty: protection
Mrakic and Lazzarini: A Case Study in How Power Turns Against Palestinians
“It is in the nature of power that it can also lead to abuse.” Immanuel Kant
Few embody Kant’s warning about the corruption of power more clearly than UNDP’s Alessandro Mrakic and the UNRWA Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini whose decisions reveal exactly what happens when authority loses its moral anchor. When they take office, they always start the same way: soft, conciliatory, overly courteous. They walk through the corridors performing friendliness, offering as-salāmu ʿalaykum, ahlan wa sahlan, kulshi tamam? and other canned Arabic pleasantries to appear connected to Palestinians. They charm, they placate, they pretend to “understand the context.” Then comes the classic sequence: charm the staff union, send them to missions and DSA to buy loyalty, promote a few managers to guarantee obedience, and before long, they have secured full control of the entire structure.
And once they feel fully in control, once they believe they are untouchable, that is exactly when the abuse begins. Leaders appointed to serve Palestinian staff lose their sense of reality, responsibility, and basic humanity. They stop seeing the destruction, the fear, the displacement, the daily humiliation Palestinians endure. They stop seeing Palestinians as people with rights, families, trauma, and obligations and start seeing them as obstacles to managerial convenience. Power blinds them, and in their blindness, they act with a level of arrogance that would be unthinkable in any other context.
How else can anyone explain the actions of UNDP Gaza Office Head Alessandro Mrakic? A man with no background in people management decides he can dispose of people like paperwork. He gives direct orders to terminate the contracts of two long-serving Palestinian women ( UNDP Gaza Office staff), one with more than 25 years of service by instructing HR to send an email quoting a clause about contract expiry.
“A temporary or FTA shall expire automatically and without prior notice on the expiration date specified in the letter of appointment.”
How does he even dare to use an “expiry” provision in this context? Do Palestinian staff “expire” because they fled bombardment? Because they fled the horror of death and genocide? Do years of service, loyalty, and survival simply evaporate under Mrakic’s administrative convenience?
Mrakic further threatened that their contracts would end on 31 December 2025 if they did not return immediately to Gaza. This, while Israel has categorically barred all Palestinian UN staff who fled Gaza from returning under any circumstances.
At the same time, Mrakic found it perfectly acceptable to pull USD 400,000 from the UNDP Crisis Bureau funds to hire more than 13 international staff three of them Italian, mirroring Mrakic’s own nationality.
Kant warned that power bends toward abuse the moment it is left unchecked. Mrakic is the textbook illustration: rewarding his own network, expanding his own circle, fortifying his own comfort, all while Palestinian staff are punished for fleeing death. Power, once concentrated, turns inward and corrupts. Instead of safeguarding Palestinian staff under bombardment, Mrakic invests in building a protective wall of internationals around himself. Resources flow upward to the privileged, the safe, the Western European, while the Palestinian staff of Gaza pay the price for surviving a war.
It is indeed in the nature of power that it can also lead to abuse. And the abuse becomes so entrenched that officials no longer see the human cost of their decisions nor the consequences for Palestinian lives and livelihoods. They stop recognising that each email they sign off on destroys a Palestinian family’s income, pushes Palestinian women further into precarity, or strips long-serving staff of their dignity. What should be moral decisions become administrative reflexes and the suffering becomes invisible to them, because they no longer look for it.
Take Philippe Lazzarini, proudly tweeting a few weeks ago:
“With the ceasefire in place, UNRWA is stepping up its back-to-learning programme both in person and online.”
This, while Lazarrini personally decided to withhold the salaries of more than 600 UNRWA teachers over 400 of them women because they fled Gaza under bombardment. These same teachers continued teaching remotely and they are fully eligible for teaching the online learning programme he tweets so proudly about.
And all of this, while Lazzarini himself works remotely from Geneva, fully benefiting from Alternate Working Modalities (AWM), a policy designed, inter alia , to protect staff during war, insecurity, and displacement. Lazzarini enjoys every safeguard, every exemption, every layer of protection the system offers, while denying those same protections to the Palestinian women and men who kept UNRWA’s education system alive under airstrikes. He promotes online learning publicly, yet refuses to grant the Palestinian staff delivering it access to Alternate Working Modalities (AWM) a UN-wide entitlement available to all staff, specifically created for circumstances exactly like Gaza.
Every international staff member from Gaza and the West Bank has been relocated, placed on AWM, and is now working from the comfort of their own homes, laptops open, coffee mugs beside them, fluffy cushions behind their backs. Meanwhile, Palestinian UNRWA teachers are struggling to survive in Egypt, living in uncertainty, displacement and financial precarity, and still denied the same right.
Lazzarini writes glowing op-eds in The Guardian about UNRWA’s “capacity, expertise and community trust,” praising Palestinian teachers, doctors and engineers as the backbone of public service delivery. This public rhetoric earns him credibility with donors and applause in international forums yet no one bothers to ask how he treats his own Palestinian teachers, doctors and engineers behind closed doors.
What has he done to honour the more than 550 UNRWA staff killed by Israel? Why is he withholding the compensation their families are owed; compensation that is the bare minimum gesture of recognition for the staff who died delivering the very services he advertises in his speeches?
No one asks, because no one is interested in Palestinians.
No one asks because no one is interested in Palestinian lives, deaths, or the injustice that follows them into every system, including the UN’s.
The ugly truth is Palestinian suffering does not trend. It does not attract donor pledges. It does not move the powerful. It is tolerated, rationalised, or quietly swept aside. Mrakic and Lazzarini, like hundreds of other senior UN officials are invested in realpolitik, in optics, and survival of their own positions. Principles and moral courage do not feature anywhere in their decision-making.
Who will hold such officials accountable?
Kant warned that the moment power becomes enjoyable, judgment collapses. The pleasure of authority blinds reason, distorts duty, and turns leadership into self-preservation. Nothing corrupts faster than the comfort of power and nothing weakens moral clarity more than believing you are untouchable. When officials start enjoying their position instead of exercising it responsibly, conscience fades, principles dissolve, and the people they were meant to serve become collateral damage.
It is indeed in the nature of power that it can lead to abuse. But abuse is not inevitable. Even now, you can choose differently, if you dare look at what you have already done. Look inward, not outward.
This is a decisive moment, the moment you chose to turn your back on your own Palestinian staff. The people who kept this organization standing in the worst conditions imaginable. The people you were appointed to protect, not discard.
In truth, power didn’t corrupt you: you bent it and weaponised it to serve yourselves, and left your Palestinian staff to pay the price.
There are cases that reveal, far more than any policy document or SG speech, what the UN truly is when stripped of its rhetoric. Two recent UNDT Orders Order No. 80 (GVA/2025) and Order No. 110 (GVA/2025), do exactly that.
In May 2021, a long-serving UNEP staff member suffered a severe medical event that left her unable to speak, move, or respond. She became fully dependent on medical technology and constant clinical supervision: tracheostomy management, airway care, rapid-response for oxygen desaturation, seizure monitoring, and PEG-related interventions. For four years, her survival has required the presence of trained intensive-care nurses, operating in a home-based environment that replicates the core functions of a monitored clinical setting.
Her daughter, placed in the position of legal representative, continued coordinating her mother’s care while navigating the UN Worldwide Medical Plan (UNWWP), annual medical reporting, and the system of exceptional reimbursements that had been approved year after year. The UN had accepted, without dispute, that her mother’s condition required uninterrupted 24/7 medical care and multiple therapies exceeding standard plan limits.
The arrangement held. Until it didn’t.
On 24 June 2025, everything shifted. Cigna, the UN Health Insurance Provider, in coordination with the UN Health and Life Insurance Section (HLIS) and the UN Division of Healthcare Management and Occupational Safety and Health (DHMOSH), jointly informed the daughter that, as of 1 July, the services her mother had relied on for four years, services previously acknowledged as clinically essential, would no longer be covered. The reason: these services were now considered “custodial care,” a category excluded by the UN plan.
It was a decisive administrative shift delivered at the precise point where the mother’s ability to survive depended on continuity.
Shocked by the decision, the daughter, who is not a UN staff or a UN expert, sought management evaluation on 27 June and immediately filed an application for suspension of action. Her position was straightforward: withdrawing life-preserving medical care with almost no notice would have direct consequences that could not be reversed. She supported her application with medical reports, Cigna’s own written confirmation that the care constituted “medical services,” and clinical certificates describing the risks of interruption.
When the UN Dispute Tribunal examined the file, the judge noted that the decision “changed the status quo,” that the Organisation had provided no evidence supporting the reclassification, and that the Administration had not disclosed the independent medical report it claimed to rely upon. The daughter, in contrast, had substantiated every aspect of her claim.
The Tribunal appeared ready to assess the lawfulness of the decision. And at that point, the Organisation altered its position.
Before the Tribunal could rule on the suspension, the Administration granted a temporary extension of the 24/7 medical care until 30 September 2025. With the implementation postponed, the application became moot, and the Tribunal dismissed it.
It is important to note that from the very beginning, the Administration did not limit itself to defending the medical reclassification. It immediately resorted to a stunningly aggressive tactic, attempting to block the daughter’s request on receivability grounds and arguing that the Tribunal had no jurisdiction even to hear the suspension application. In other words, instead of addressing the substance, the UN attempted to stop the case from being heard at all. Thisastonishing procedural maneuverillustrates the Organisation’s reflex: when confronted with a life-or-death situation affecting a former staff member, its first instinct was to litigate the technicalities of admissibility rather than engage with the urgent medical emergency at hand.
This sequence repeated itself three months later.
As the September deadline approached, the daughter filed a second suspension application on 16 September. The Administration replied by informing the Tribunal that coverage would again be extended, this time until 31 December 2025. The management evaluation was closed one day after the application was filed, rendering the matter no longer receivable.
Once again, the Tribunal could not examine the substance.
In both orders, Judge Sun implicitly warned what was happening:
The Administration was deliberately prolonging the review, granting just-enough extensions to “avoid judicial scrutiny” (words used by the Applicant, and clearly not contradicted by the Tribunal), while forcing the daughter to re-litigate every 90 days to prevent the Organization from withdrawing life-sustaining care.
The judge went so far as to remind the Administration of its “duty of care” and to urge it to stop this cycle of threats, delays, and last-minute extensions. That is as close as the Tribunal comes to reprimand outside a judgment on the merits. The judge declined to rule on the merits. But he added something rarely said in these orders. He formally reminded the UN of its duty of care:
“In view of the seriousness of the matter, the Tribunal highlights the Administration’s duty of care towards its staff members, and strongly encourages it to expedite the resolution… to avoid the need for another application.” (Order No. 110, para. 18)
These orders are important because they expose a system where:
Duty of care becomes optional.
Medical vulnerability becomes a legal opportunity: a chance to reduce costs under the cover of “interpretation.”
Staff are protected only as long as they can fight.
Family members become de facto litigants, expected to know insurance law, administrative law, medical guidelines, and UN internal procedures at the very moment their lives are collapsing.
A procedural pattern where the UN uses short-term extensions as a shield, avoiding having to justify its actions before a judge.
The legality of the core decision remains unexamined because each extension resets the clock.
A judicial record quietly flags the implications, without venturing beyond the limits of the suspension-of-action mechanism.
The case illustrates how administrative decisions can shift the ground beneath individuals who are least able to absorb disruption, and how the internal justice framework, when confined to procedural thresholds, can be prevented from addressing the underlying issue.
A former staff member with catastrophic injuries should not be engaged in legal proceedings directly or through her daughter, just to preserve life-sustaining care. The language of the Orders shows a judge repeatedly constrained by the procedural rules of suspension applications, unable to reach the core issue because the Organisation shifts position just in time.
The facts speak clearly: confronted with a former staff member whose survival depends on uninterrupted medical care, the UN showed remarkable speed and determination in defending its administrative position, yet an equally remarkable unwillingness to honour the core obligation it owes its personnel: a duty of care that, in this case, was treated as expendable.
