According to a new documentary, United Nations employees were sacked after reporting charges of sexual assault by coworkers, since the organization is ‘infested with corruption.’ The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has been asked to convene an independent commission to investigate reports that some women in the country had been ‘accosted and raped’.
He has also been asked to address a culture in which top staff is reportedly insulated from complaints lodged through official procedures. The BBC documentary ‘The Whistleblowers: Inside the UN’ delves into allegations of sexual assault, management cover-ups, and corruption.
In the documentary, whistleblower Peter Gallo stated: ‘For four years, I worked as an investigator at the United Nations headquarters in New York. As a consequence of that experience, I am sure that corruption exists at all levels of the organisation’. He recalled an incident in which a senior employee expressed worries at a meeting after a female coworker approached him sobbingly and accused him of sexual assault. Mr. Gallo claims that the allegations were withdrawn because the accused was ‘a favourite son’.
Purna Sen left her job as the organization’s spokesman on harassment, assault, and discrimination in the summer of 2020 after discovering that her position would not be extended. She said that UN staff had been ‘accosted, approached, and raped’. She observed that ‘the more they do it,’ the more males will be permitted to get away with it. Senior staff personnel is free from all national legislation due to the UN’s protected legal status. This immunity, however, is null and invalid if it is utilized for the personal advantage of staff members.
A third of the employees reported being sexually harassed: In the documentary, Sen stated that while a ‘astonishing’ third of UN personnel reported sexual harassment at work, the great majority of cases went unreported. According to the BBC programme, staff who sought to report the accusations faced repercussions, with some being fired. The UN Secretary General’s office maintains that ‘sanctioning any worker, junior or senior, found to have participated in sexual harassment’ remains a key priority.
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