United Nations to Increase Whistleblower Protections
By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team
As reported in UN News Centre, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres approved an updated United Nations whistleblower policy designed to better protect whistleblowers who report misconduct or cooperate with official audits or investigations.
According to UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric, the major changes include:
- The Ethics Office and Office of Internal Oversight Services can take preventive action where a risk of retaliation has been identified rather than having to identify a specific retaliatory act before requesting protection.
- Whistleblower protections will be afforded to those reporting wrongdoing committed not only by UN staff but also by UN contractors, non-UN peacekeepers and others.
- Staff will now have the right to seek review of Ethics Office determinations.
- Whistleblowers will be notified of disciplinary measures taken against staff members found to have engaged in retaliation.
Having a sound whistleblower protection program has always been a priority for Guterres and he appears eager to go even further than these reforms in his efforts to promote and protect whistleblowers. He has also tasked an internal working group — with a June 30 deadline — to examine whether the enlarged whistleblower protections should be further expanded to cover consultants and individual contractors. Until then, the Secretary-General has asked the Ethics Office to continue its practice of providing assistance to consultants and individual contractors who seek protection against retaliation.
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Now that ST/SGB/2017/2 has been published, it is clear to see it is not worth the paper it is written on.
The UN Ethics Office dismiss over 97% of all applications for whistleblower protection at the ‘preliminary review’ stage. They have a presumption AGAINST retaliation, they do that by making arbitrary decisions on what constitutes a “reasonable belief” of misconduct, by misrepresenting the rules and by being selective in the passages they want to quote to support their prejudice – and para 10.3 makes it clear that any decision by the Ethics Office does NOT constitute an “administrative decision” and therefore cannot be challenged.
This is nothing more than a cynical attempt to distract the US State Department and carry on as before.