Commentary- Sexual Victims: How The UN Gets Away With Abuse And Misconduct Towards Female Staff

By Tala Dowlatshahi

This month, the United Nations launched UN Women, a global division tasked with the goal of improving gender equality and the empowerment of women. United States Ambassador at the United Nations, Dr. Susan Rice warmly congratulated the General Assembly for the unanimous adoption of the UN Women resolution, which would create a separate gender sphere of work to (as Rice stated):  “recognize the universality of the goal of improving women’s lives, from economic empowerment and increased women’s participation in political processes to protection of women and girls from violence and discrimination.” 

UN Women received a great deal of support and spawned a vast amount of global media coverage from the New York Times to the India Times. Its creation comes at a time when the highly charged case of Cynthia Brzak, an American citizen who in 2003 accused the then head of the UN Refugee Agency, Ruud Lubbers, with “groping her” inside his UN office, has gone all the way to the United States Supreme Court. The case went through several appeals and is up before the Supreme Court this fall. The Court is expected to make a final decision on whether new rules of conduct will be enforced at UN buildings. It will review a March ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that upheld a New York federal court’s dismissal of the case. The dismissal guarantees UN male staffers diplomatic immunity. The debate is set for this fall.   

As the issue of women returned to the top of the UN agenda, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own experiences as a woman, as a middle-easterner, as a young full-time UN staffer when my experience with the Organization, and dealings with UN men, began some eight years ago.  

Eight years ago, I returned from a job in London with Amnesty International to start my first UN job with one of their development agencies. Our division was being created and offices refurbished so I was placed in an office next door to an African diplomat in the division for African development. At first, relations were warm: his best friend was Iranian, he often reminded me and he absolutely adored Persian food. “Kabobs are my favorite,” he would say smiling. But the relationship grew strained shortly thereafter. He began to eye me, sometimes trying to catch my eye so that he could smile one of his wide-eyed smiles and give me a wink. At one point, on my way to catch an urgent fax, he grabbed my arm in a hallway in front of his colleague and said “Come here girl, you can’t just walk by so quickly.” When I got back to my office I discovered that I was actually in serious pain. He practically twisted my arm from its socket, I thought to myself. After taking a few breaths, I walked into his spacious office. I sat down in one of his chairs and said bluntly. “Look, I am trying to work out an amicable and professional relationship here, but I would appreciate it if you could please avoid grabbing me or putting your hands on me at all.”  He just looked back at me and then smiled and said “Is this the American in you talking? Where did the Iranian girl go? She was much warmer.” 

I left his office speechless and we proceeded to ignore each other in the months that followed. I never reported the incident.  

Years later I was in an elevator at the United Nations Secretariat. I was dressed down, in jeans, and was holding a box of my things since I was starting a new contract as a communications consultant in the main building. An Iranian diplomat walked into the elevator just as the doors were closing. We were alone and I could feel his eyes on me from behind. “Are you Brazilian?” he asked me. I replied that I was not. I guessed he did not suspect that I was also an Iranian. “Oh,” he went on, “I am very interested in going to these Brazilian nightclubs.”  “I am not Brazilian,” I repeated. “Are you an intern?” he asked back with a sly smile. I turned to him and replied “No, but (in Farsi) I am an Iranian and what you are doing is completely inappropriate.” His face sank and turned very red.  He got off at the next floor without saying goodbye. 

I have heard of dozens of such instances. In the Congo, one of the UN staffers asked me to be his “Persian princess”. He knew I was married. Just last month, a UN fellow journalist came barging into my office and asked me to take “notes” for him because he was too busy and knew I was an efficient “woman”.  I looked at him in shock, but he was serious.  

Throughout these experiences, I couldn’t help but feel that somehow I was to blame. Am I too “American”? Was I being too much of a career woman when I could have tried to be a bit more playful? Am I too sensitive?  

So much of my personal experience seems to overlap with Brzak’s. She is an American. She has been described as volatile and aggressive. But as these stereotypical labels continue to brand strong independent outspoken women, I realized this name tagging is just a common weave that is woven by the men inside a system that demonizes women who speak out for their rights. Perhaps a copy of Simone de Beauvoir’s “Second Sex” could be written into the Supreme Court decision as mandatory reading for all UN male staffers.

Brzak has alleged time and time again that even after Lubbers was forced to resign, male staffers at the UN continued to harass her. An internal investigation by the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) eventually succeeded in getting Lubbers off UNHCR payroll, but the sense that she was to blame for needlessly damaging social relations inside her department, has never left her.  A co-plantiff in the case, Nasr Ishak, who also worked at UNHCR and alleged abuse by Lubbers, complained as well that U.N. officials have repeatedly bullied Brzak, released her confidential medical records, and sidelined her performance at work.  We all just seem so trapped.  

A few weeks ago, I went to visit Michael Dudley at the OIOS (Office for Internal Oversight Services). Michael is the lead investigator into sexual harassment cases filled by UN staff against UN staff. Michael admitted that these investigations face “serious challenges” mainly owing to the vast array of diverse cultures and social expectations of people working for the UN across the globe.   

“Many female staff go through instances of benign to severe incidents of harassment. And a lot of sexual harassment can be as subtle as a wink,” Dudley told me. 

In response to the Brzak case and several other reports of abuse from UN staffers in India, Lebanon, Kuwait, Liberia, and Gaza-to name a few, OIOS has implemented a new training program for UN staff to better understand what sexual harassment is and how to prevent abuse within their office environment.  Its a tough challenge, as there are some 60,000 UN staffers worldwide, many of whom subscribe to different standards for what constitutes acceptable behavior between men and women.  

The multimedia and interactive course has trained some 200 staff.  Its participants, according to the course objectives, “acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to analyze complaints of sexual harassment, interview relevant parties, obtain and analyse evidence and prepare a report specifying the facts established and outlining the findings.” 

The opening exercise is a video which outlines how to “handle emotion” and then moves on to issues of trust and physical contact between co-workers.  It concludes with a “distressed colleague exercise,” and provides a follow up methodology entitled “victimology.”  

Whatever the outcome of the case, I congratulate the women who have spoken out against sexual harassment. They took many risks that affected their personal livelihoods in order to force a change within the system. UN men can no longer be allowed to smile and laugh this off; hopefully UN Women won’t let them.  

LISTEN to my interview with the lead investigator Michael Dudley, Office of Internal Oversight Services. 

If you are interested in following my series leading up to the Supreme Court decision in the fall 2010, please look for my interview with Cynthia’s attorney, Edward Flaherty on July 15th.  A one-on-one interview with Cynthia is forthcoming in early September.