[But within the United Nations itself, the system for examining sexual misconduct by employees is so inconsistent that investigators sometimes use those same contentious laws to help guide their inquiries — a clear example, critics say, of the broad gap between the organization’s public pronouncements and its own practices.]
By
Jina Moore
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The
United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, has promised to make
Accountability
for sexual misconduct a central part of his leadership.
Credit
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
|
It took the woman one agonizing month to decide
to report that she had been sexually assaulted by a colleague from the World
Food Program, a United Nations agency, while working in Ethiopia.
It took the agency a week to investigate,
concluding in a single-page document that it didn’t believe her.
Then, more than a year later, investigators
asked her lurid questions about her sexual positions during the encounter,
according to the case files.
She had no bruises or proof of force, and
investigators concluded that her claim fell short of the legal definition of
rape in Ethiopia and in the man’s native country.
On the world stage, the United Nations takes
an uncompromising stance on sexual abuse, trumpeting a “zero tolerance” policy
for infractions by its employees and condemning rape laws that require a woman
to show injuries to prove that she did not consent.
But within the United Nations itself, the
system for examining sexual misconduct by employees is so inconsistent that
investigators sometimes use those same contentious laws to help guide their
inquiries — a clear example, critics say, of the broad gap between the
organization’s public pronouncements and its own practices.
“I was absolutely baffled” by the
investigation’s conclusion, the woman said. The case files, which she shared
with The New York Times, “read like a manual in how not to investigate a sexual
assault,” she added.
The world of humanitarian aid — a
multibillion-dollar industry whose biggest player is the United Nations — has
not escaped scrutiny in the #MeToo moment, with some officials resigning from
organizations after accusations of sexual misconduct.
The United Nations Secretary General, António
Guterres, has promised to make accountability for sexual misconduct a central
part of his leadership. Last fall, he appointed senior officials to review
procedures and document victims’ stories.
But to many women in the industry, these
measures sidestep the deep structural problems that have allowed decades of
sexism and abuse within the United Nations to continue.
They say internal investigations give greater
credence to powerful men who deny wrongdoing than to the women who accuse them,
and that reporting systems are so byzantine that it is often unclear how to
make a complaint, or what happens to the women who do.
Such criticisms — that the policies are
inconsistent and that the sprawling bureaucracy is tarnished by sexism — are
“exactly the secretary general’s opinion,” said Stéphane Dujarric, Mr.
Guterres’ spokesman.
Mr. Dujarric said a lack of gender diversity
and specialized training in internal investigations inhibited organization’s
handling of sexual assault reports.
The root of the problem “for the secretary
general is the balance-of-power issue,” he added, citing Mr. Guterres’ latest
strategy to address that imbalance.
“We have a lot of work to do,” he said.
Mr. Dujarric acknowledged that across the
United Nations there is no consistent procedure or standard of proof for
investigating sexual harassment and assault cases. The organization’s 27
programs, funds and agencies largely operate independently, creating a
patchwork of policies across a vast bureaucracy. Some investigators indicated
that they relied on the legal definition of rape in the country where the act
is committed — even in countries where the United Nations considers the law
flawed.
“The whole thing is just a system designed to
protect the organization,” said Peter Gallo, who worked as an investigator at
the Office of Internal Oversight Services at the United Nations Secretariat.
“The U.N. is more interested in its reputation than in protecting victims.”
More than a dozen women who worked at five
United Nations agencies over 10 years, whose names are being withheld because
they fear workplace retaliation, described a system that they said was stacked
against them. Some said they were accused of being overly emotional when they
tried to report an incident. Others described being verbally abused for seeking
to report it.
Mr. Dujarric, the spokesman for Mr. Guterres,
said the secretary general led discussions on the issue at a May meeting of the
United Nations Chief Executives Board. He said the board had agreed to changes
in reporting, investigation and decision-making procedures, like recruiting
better-trained investigators and building a database of employees fired for
sexual harassment, to avoid rehiring them at a different agency.
The process for investigating misconduct is
so unpredictable, some critics say, that victims of harassment or abuse don’t
know whether they will be discouraged, taken seriously or penalized for coming
forward.
One woman working for the United Nations in
Iraq described how a male colleague, who sometimes shared videos demeaning
women, told her how happy he was to have “loose and sexy women” from Ukraine
and Lebanon in the office. When she tried to file a complaint, she said, she
was discouraged by an ethics officer who told her the insults did not count as
harassment.
A woman at an agency headquarters in New York
described seeking advice for a friend about reporting an assault, only to find
out that she was required to report what she knew, even without the friend’s
consent. Moreover, she learned, she and her friend’s names could be shared with
the accused, making her nervous about retaliation.
“I don’t think this guy is going to come with
a gun to my house or something, but on the other hand, you never know,” she
said.
Investigators at some United Nations agencies
described their work as operating in a gray area. They conduct internal reviews
that can lead to punishments like termination; they are not criminal
investigators prosecuting offenders.
But they said they often turned to criminal
definitions of sexual assault — and sometimes use a “beyond a reasonable doubt”
standard of proof — in the absence of clear guidance from their agencies.
“It’s not so clear cut,” said Fabienne
Lambert, the internal investigator at the United Nations Population Fund. “It
depends on the type of wrongdoing.”
Paula Donovan, who advocates greater
accountability in sexual assaults by United Nations personnel, argued that
sexual assault claims face the highest burdens of proof, which unfairly
disadvantages victims.
“The system is designed to ensure that the
smallest possible number of those who are accused are found guilty,” she said.
“They’re using a standard that is only applied when people are facing 10 years
to life in prison.”
In recent months, U.N. Women, the United
Nations agency dedicated to gender equality, appointed a special coordinator on
sexual harassment, and other major United Nations agencies have reminded staff
members of the “zero tolerance” for sexual harassment in the workplace.
Still, agencies within the United Nations
sometimes interpret that differently.
At the United Nations Population Fund, the
standard for determining misconduct is “clear and convincing evidence,” Ms.
Lambert said.
At the World Food Program, by contrast, the
standard is the same as in an American court of law, “beyond a reasonable
doubt,” according to a program spokeswoman.
Complicating matters, there is little
evidence in many sexual assault cases beyond the statements from the two people
involved, investigators said. Often, they added, they must decide how to assess
those statements on their own.
“It boils down to credibility,” said Henrik
Malmquist, the head of investigations for the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees.
In the World Food Program case in Ethiopia,
the man’s credibility was assessed, in part, by asking witnesses what kind of
“guy” he was, according to the case files. The woman’s credibility was assessed
by asking questions about her mental health, her past romantic history and
whether she engaged in “flirtatious” behavior with the accused, among other
things, the files show.
To the woman, the language investigators used
when they first closed her case in November 2014 suggested that they were more
interested in clearing her accuser’s name than in understanding what had
happened, she said.
“I remember exactly what they said: ‘We
recognize that the sex happened, but we do not have evidence that it was not
consensual,’” she said. “And I said, ‘Do you have evidence that it was
consensual?’ And they said, ‘That’s not our job.’”
According to the case files, investigators
partly supported their decision by arguing that she could have escaped, based
on the sexual positions they had her describe.
The case files suggest that investigators
excluded from their analysis the range of possible responses to sexual assault,
including what experts call “tonic immobility,” an involuntary paralysis
sometimes experienced in traumatic situations.
“Victims talk about that, feeling like they
were paralyzed by the fear, and that’s a result of the circuitry of fear,” said
Elana Newman, a psychology professor at the University of Tulsa.
The woman in the Ethiopia case appealed the
investigators’ conclusion, and in 2015 the World Food Program contracted the
firm Stroz Friedberg to conduct a second investigation. The agency spokeswoman
said it had contracted the firm because of its experience with sexual assault
issues.
But the firm’s website says it specializes in
cybersecurity and data management, with clientele that include Uber and
Facebook, which recently hired the firm in connection with revelations that
Cambridge Analytica inappropriately acquired data from up to 87 million
Facebook users.
The investigators assigned to re-examine the
woman’s case were former prosecutors, one of whom had published papers about
the risk factors for false convictions in the criminal justice system. Stroz
Friedberg did not return phone calls or emails requesting comment.
According to the case files, the firm
interviewed a dozen people in late 2015. Two witness statements sided with the
accused. One came from the man himself, who said the sex was consensual.
Another came from a middle manager who said she didn’t believe the woman
because she thought a rape victim would scream or fight during the act, and
because she thought the accused appeared to be “quite a gentleman.”
Of the nine people the investigative team
interviewed, seven indicated that they believed the woman. A counselor also
told investigators that the woman’s behavior after the assault was consistent
with other rape victims he had counseled.
Investigators acknowledged that the woman’s
statements to witnesses after the episode supported her claim that the sex was
not consensual. But because she had given the man her phone number and kissed
him before the alleged assault — a fact she acknowledged — the investigators
determined that the activity was “not non-consensual,” the case files show.
The man she accused denied committing sexual
assault, and said his case raised concerns about false accusations. In an
email, he questioned his accuser’s professional qualifications, mental state and
motives. “My success in life might have attracted jealousy, unfortunately,” he
wrote.
The woman said the investigation felt like a
“second violation.”
“When it happened, I felt like I was torn
open,” she said. “And then people are saying, ‘No, that didn’t happen. You have
no proof,’ or ‘You’re not credible.’”
She is now pursuing an internal claim against
the World Food Program for its handling of the case. The agency invited her to
settle the matter through “amicable discussions” — and required strict
nondisclosure terms that precluded any further referral of the matter,
including to “administrative or judicial bodies,” according to an email from an
official seen by The Times.
She refused.
Ed Flaherty, a lawyer who represents United
Nations employees, including in sexual abuse cases, said the current process
for investigating assaults was fundamentally flawed.
“The U.N. should not be investigating itself,”
he said. “God help you if you’re on the wrong side.”