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By Matthew Russell Lee, CJR PFT CEFC Video

UN GATE, Dec 13 – At the UN under Secretary General Antonio Guterres there has been entirely unaddressed sexual abuse both in and by the Organization as well  bribery, including offers of weapons for oil by UN non governmental organization China Energy Fund Committee of Ye Jianming which Guterres refuses to even audit - while roughing up and banning the Press which asks him about it.

  At UNAIDS, Guterres praised Michel Sidibe to the very end, and still refuses questions on sexual abuse by the peacekeepers he and USG Lacroix are responsible for. Now on December 13, "Martina Brostrom was fired today from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) on the basis of charges that she categorically denies, in what she described as a blatant act of retaliation.   "I challenged the status quo," Brostrom said. "I spoke up about what happened to me and what was happening in UNAIDS. As a consequence, I have suffered tremendously."   Ms. Brostrom had reported that the second-in-command at UNAIDS, Luiz Loures, sexually assaulted her during a conference and attempted to drag her from an elevator to his hotel room. Her allegations shone a public spotlight on rampant sexual offenses and sexual harassment perpetrated with impunity against women within the UN program.   Ms. Brostrom's brave stand led to the creation of an Independent Expert Panel, which found “overwhelming” evidence of a “broken organisational culture” and called for an immediate change in UNAIDS’ leadership. In the fallout over the Panel’s findings of a toxic work environment and “cult of personality” at UNAIDS, then-Executive Director Michel Sidibé announced that he would resign early from his post, and he then secured a position as health minister in his native Mali.   UNAIDS' initial response to Brostrom's allegations was to deny her claims. A deeply flawed and biased internal investigation claimed to find insufficient evidence of the assault. Sidibé publicly denounced staff who report sexual abuse as immoral and unethical, and he extended Luiz Loures’ contract to allow him to retire with the highest possible donor-funded pension payout. As more victims went public with eerily similar accounts of being assaulted by Loures in hotel lifts, UN Secretary-General António Guterres announced in April 2018 that on the basis of new evidence, he was re-opening the Loures investigation. Nothing more has been heard in the 20 months since. But during that time, UNAIDS went on the offensive, scouring files and phone records to open an investigation into Ms. Brostrom and recast the victim as the offender.    “The UN is comfortably stuck in the 1950s, untouched by feminism or the #MeToo movement, rigorously adhering to its ancient double standards: men are protected and women are hounded,” said Paula Donovan, Co-Director of AIDS-Free World's Code Blue Campaign, which has played an instrumental role in advocating for Ms. Brostrom and other victims of UN abuse. “UNAIDS’ damage-control efforts cost US $1.3 million, according to an internal audit. The message to other women is clear: defend your rights and we will spare no expense to blame you, shame you, and make you disappear.” 

Ms. Brostrom, who held out hope of justice upon the arrival of Winnie Byanyima, a new executive director with a background in women’s rights, is distraught by this latest blow...  “I realized that when a train is speeding, you cannot get off even when you want to. But I will not give up or stay silent, and that is my contribution to the UN.”

On Sidibe, the UN said: "The Secretary-General has accepted the resignation of Michel Sidibé, the Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), following his appointment as Minister of Health and Social Affairs of the Republic of Mali.  The Secretary-General is grateful for Mr. Sidibé’s dedication and championing of an AIDS response that is people-centred and anchored in human rights, and recognizes his contribution in keeping AIDS high on the political agenda,  promoting multi-stakeholder partnerships and mobilizing sustainable financing for an effective AIDS response.  The Deputy Executive Director for Management and Governance of UNAIDS, Ms. Gunilla Carlsson, has been appointed as the Acting Executive Director while the recruitment process for a successor is underway." Guterres is killing the UN, and will further do so with forthcoming appointments. Watch this site.

  This symbolizes Guterres' faux feminism. While using the issue to try to distract from his failed Secretariat, he rewards closed by harasser Fabrizio Hochschild, and lets Sidibe leave UNAIDS as a hero rather than the criminal he and Guterres are, and get another post. Guterres is disgusting. His recent online disclosure covering 2016 omits for example his listed role through 2018 in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. That the new disclosures should have already been filed in shown for example by the case of Michel Sidibe, on whose promotion of sexual harassment in UNAID Guterres never acted, standing by as donor revolt alone led Sidibe to offer to leave in mid 2019. Sidibe's most recent filing, which goes all the way back to 2016 given Guterres' cover-up culture, lists a mortgage in the US but does not list or disclose any property in the US. Photo here. This makes no sense. There's property in Mali and France. We'll have more on this.

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