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Abstract
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Sexual harassment and assault investigation at UNAIDS draws attention to an endemic problem. Critics say the UN's internal system is flawed and call for external oversight. John Zarocostas reports.
The controversy over a high-profile investigation that examined allegations of sexual harassment and assault against a top official of UNAIDS has sent shockwaves throughout the international health community, as details emerge that the issue might have reached far more widely than official data indicate, in the midst of a culture of silence, intimidation, and fear.
Allegations were cast against Luiz Loures, then deputy executive director of Programme at UNAIDS and assistant secretary-general of the UN, whose term ended in March, 2018, after he had decided not to seek renewal of his post.
The complainant, Martina Brostrom, a UNAIDS external relations officer, went public about the case in an on Jan 30. She told The Lancet “I am speaking up publicly now because I have exhausted all internal UN channels for justice to no avail. Despite strong evidence, most of which was ignored in the investigation and final investigation report, my assailant has been exonerated. I consider the investigation as flawed and biased.”
One global health expert says that these allegations at UNAIDS are “just the tip of the iceberg”, and something many watched unfold at the Geneva-based agency over much of the past decade. “The situation in the organisation was toxic and endemic and senior managers covered each others' backs…”, a former senior UNAIDS official told The Lancet. Both experts declined to be identified. “There was a sort of conspiracy of silence. There were umpteen people within the system that I know were predators.”
An anonymised UNAIDS staff association survey for 2017, cited by UNAIDS in a statement on Feb 9, found that 5·4% of the 427 survey respondents said they had experienced sexual harassment in the workplace in the past year. When asked how many sexual misconduct complaints UNAIDS had received during the past 10 years, Mahesh Mahalingam, UNAIDS director of Communications and Global Advocacy, said that one was reported in 2009 and the other in 2016, and that both cases are closed...
Language: en |