A Fresh Start to Ending UN Sex Abuse?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Code Blue Campaign welcomes—conditionally—a decision by Secretary-General António Guterres that we have advocated for years. The job of “Special Coordinator on improving the United Nations response to sexual exploitation and abuse,” which is currently a “when-as-needed” position, will now be filled with a “full-time, dedicated” senior official.

Consider that the incumbent, Jane Holl Lute, was appointed six years ago by Ban Ki-moon in response to public fury over a UN coverup of child sex abuse exposed by Code Blue. In 2017, when Mr. Guterres became Secretary-General, he renewed Ms. Lute’s contract at the Under-Secretary-General level to implement an array of “game-changing solutions” that he dubbed his “New Approach” to the Organization’s internal sex abuse crisis.  

The New Approach has failed. The admittedly incomplete statistics in the Secretary-General’s latest Special Measures progress report describe a growing epidemic: in 2021, the UN received 194 reports that its personnel had sexually abused or exploited women and children, an increase of 21 percent over the year before. That leap wasn’t an anomaly: in the first year of the New Approach, 112 allegations were recorded; by the second year, they jumped to 148. And the data show no meaningful improvement in criminal accountability since 2017.

The Secretary-General characterizes the United Nations’ untamed epidemic of sexual violations as regrettable, but he seems unable to offer any explanations or solutions. Code Blue has both.

The simplest explanation is found in that old adage: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. To achieve different outcomes, Mr. Guterres and his next Special Coordinator will have to step off the treadmill of the 76-year-old organization and look to different, previously ignored analysts and problem-solvers for new perspectives and new ideas.

As new cases emerge, the global public perceives that one UN is beset by one relentless sex abuse crisis. Inside the sprawling system, though, a number of distinct UN “entities” follow opaque, inscrutable, and often conflicting policies and procedures and treat claims against their own personnel as proprietary. Details can be hidden even from UN headquarters. It’s no wonder that past attempts to coordinate the UN’s response to sexual exploitation and abuse into a coherent whole have failed.

An effective Special Coordinator will scrutinize what’s been done in the past, be prepared to abandon what hasn’t worked, and seek out fresh sources of knowledge and experience that can point the old UN in new directions.

This next Under-Secretary-General will be charged with solving a problem of the UN’s own making that has eluded internal experts for over half a century. But a new leader can succeed where others have failed by taking the time to first scrutinize each component of the current United Nations’ response, before calling for the reforms necessary to fix a malfunctioning system and end this crisis. 

To add to a working draft of minimum steps that might be taken, click here.

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For a complete overview of Code Blue’s work on the Special Coordinator, visit our Spotlight page.

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