Excellencies, Ministers, colleagues and friends,
Good morning to you all, it’s an honour to welcome you to WHO’s first Annual Stakeholder Review Conference for the prevention and response to sexual misconduct.
As you may remember, in 2021, media reports were published containing allegations of sexual misconduct by WHO employees during the response to the 10th Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2020.
Following the publication of those allegations, I appointed an Independent Commission, that in turn selected an independent external investigator, and to make its findings publicly available – the first time there has been scrutiny of a UN organization by an external investigator.
The reason we did this is because if you do the same thing again and again, you will get the same result. So, we could have done it the same way, the status quo, but we didn’t believe that we would get a different result, as Albert Einstein says.
The Commission identified more than 80 perpetrators, about 20 of whom were WHO personnel.
Their names have been entered into the UN ClearCheck database to prevent future employment in the UN system.
Even though not all of the perpetrators were from WHO, we committed to supporting all the victims, regardless of who the perpetrators worked for, because our focus should be on the victims, based on the principle of One UN.
We established a Survivor Assistance Fund, and we provided counselling and skills training for the victims.
Although the standard is to provide one year of support, we are continuing to provide tailored support.
Beyond the specific cases of sexual misconduct in DRC, the Commission’s report was clear that WHO needed profound reform of its structures, culture and practices.
In response, we prepared a Management Response Plan to address the specific incidents, as well as the systemic issues.
The reason I am telling you this is because the DRC case for WHO was a serious one that saddened all of us and we said, we need to change. It was a serious moment for WHO. And we didn’t want to move the same way because it’s doing the same thing again and again that landed us in that problem.
When Ebola in DRC started in 2018, many experts said, it cannot be contained, it will spread to neighbouring countries and beyond. And when WHO said we can contain it, we were told that we were not thinking right.
But after two years of serious fight, of course with the leadership of the government and the involvement of all the partners, we managed to contain it in DRC and it hasn’t spread to neighbouring countries or beyond, except some exportation of cases to Uganda, as you may remember.
We were planning to celebrate that success, but we didn’t. Because we said, while we have this serious problem, we cannot celebrate the success of the response because we have a serious problem to address.
And we never celebrated that success.
For the first time that Ebola of that scale was contained in one country, after two years of fight. And we remember that moment because it was a moment of celebration but at the same time it was a moment of sadness. So we preferred, instead of celebrating, to move into taking action on the serious problem that we have been facing.
We have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go, and a lot to learn.
And we continue to ask ourselves what we can do differently - regularly, actually.
Sharing experiences, building on lessons learned and joint, honest reflection will help us address the many challenges ahead.
When WHO started accelerating our work to address sexual misconduct in 2021, I committed to the highest level of internal and external scrutiny and transparency, as I indicated earlier.
This conference contributes to that commitment by bringing together a range of key stakeholders and more than 1500 members of the WHO workforce from around the world.
We welcome scrutiny, both internal and external, because we know that we still have a long way to go and a lot to learn – from our experiences on the ground, and from each other.
The conference is also an opportunity for WHO colleagues and me to learn from the progress that you are making.
We are grateful for all of you who have come together to provide your time and expertise.
Preventing and responding to sexual misconduct by our own personnel and our implementing partners is essential to all our organizations.
It is by definition complex, and it demands that we get our own houses in order and work together at the same time.
I appreciate the participation of Christian Saunders and Jane Conners from the UN Secretary-General’s leadership team, as well as our Member States, and all stakeholders taking part today.
And Christian and Jane have been supporting us all along – my respect and my appreciation.
I thank each of you who have made the effort and shown courage to join this difficult but important conversation.
I know you have a demanding agenda ahead of you in the next two days.
In the next session, UN agencies and other stakeholders will summarize their accomplishments and challenges in the journey to address sexual misconduct.
On behalf of WHO, let me share some of our main achievements, in 10 areas:
First, we are putting culture change at the centre. Behaviour flows from the culture of an organization, so if you want to change behaviour, you have to change the culture. And that’s where we are focused.
Second, we are continuing to promote gender equality at all levels across the organization. An organization that treats all people as equal inside will treat all people as equal outside.
Third, we have developed a new set of policies on sexual misconduct, abusive conduct and retaliation, as well as a new Code of Ethics. But we also believe our policies should be considered as living documents and need continuous improvement.
Fourth, we developed an end-to-end sexual misconduct incident management system, with goals of 120 days for the investigation phase and, if substantiated, 80 days for taking disciplinary action.
By the way, after setting the goal of 120 days, we closed the backlogs. And as our colleagues used to say, justice delayed is justice denied. And that’s why the expedited investigation is very crucial to build confidence and trust in the system.
Fifth, we launched an accountability framework that identifies in detail the actions required by all personnel, supervisors, and leaders, including our WHO Country Representatives and myself.
Sixth, we are requiring all our country offices to complete risk assessment exercises for sexual misconduct and to develop and implement time-bound mitigation plans. Because prevention can happen when you identify the risks so you can address the root cause.
Seventh, we have scaled up human capital and now we have coordinators in all six regional offices and 15 priority country offices, supported by a global network of more than 400 focal points.
Eighth, we have continued to engage our workforce and partners in regular training sessions, with more than 10 000 participants.
And thank you to Gaya, who never gets tired, and her team of course.
Ninth, and most importantly, we are committed to transparency. We post on our public website the monthly numbers of allegations of sexual misconduct, and the disciplinary actions we have taken. We brief our Member States every quarter and at our governing bodies meetings.
As you may expect, the number of cases being reported is actually on the increase and we believe this is a result of opening up and something that encourages us by the way to do more because people are having trust to come to the system to address the issues.
And tenth, continuous evaluation and improvement. The most dangerous thing is the status quo. We must continue to challenge ourselves, and to ask how we can improve.
This is not something we do alone. It is something that we do together with our Member States and partners.
That’s why this conference will also include the fourth quarterly Member States briefing on sexual misconduct, at which you will have an opportunity to be briefed by and interact with WHO country representatives and regional coordinators.
I thank Member States for their inputs into our policy and the sexual misconduct accountability framework.
Thank you all for your participation in this conference, and for your partnership in our shared journey to make zero tolerance a reality, and not just a slogan.
Partnership is at the heart of everything WHO does. We work closely with many or all of you to promote, provide and protect health around the world.
We believe that the best way to truly protect the communities with which we work is through shared responsibility, with shared assessment of risks and shared support.
I look forward to the outcome of your discussions over the next two days, which will provide crucial input as we move forward.
I also take this opportunity to wish you all and your loved ones a peaceful and happy end of year season.
And I am around. When you need help, please shout at me. This is a priority for our organization, which means it’s a priority for me. Please feel free, if you have any questions or you want me to be involved within some of the discussions, I would be happy to join you and to discuss or if you have some questions.
I hope our colleagues will also give you all of the support you need but before I close, again I would like to thank Gaya for her great leadership and also all our accountability department leaders, IOS, legal, HR, ethics. We meet every week on Thursdays and the commitment of all colleagues is really amazing.
But one thing I would like to underline before I close is that we are just starting. After doing all this, what we feel is we are still starting. And we have been invited at some fora to present, saying okay you have made progress, so show us what you are doing. To be honest, there is still more to learn not more to share. Sometimes when you think, or others tell you, that you have done a lot, then the arrogance gets into the head. And we stop doing things that should be done. So, we believe we are just starting.
There is more to do, especially in this area. It’s a very, very serious issue. We shouldn’t believe that we have done a lot. We haven’t. We are just starting. And we are ready to learn from you. Please don’t hold back. Give us all that you can give us so that we can improve. I would suggest a very candid discussion during these two days. Help us move as family, whether it’s the UN, Member States, civil society, all of us to move forward. We should focus also on the challenges we are facing.
Thank you so much again. Sorry I have taken a lot of time, the allocated time was a few minutes, but because this is a serious issue, I just wanted to use the opportunity to say something that I really wanted to say. So Gaya thank you again and back to you.
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