UN Staff
Again Urge SG Guterres to
Resign Amid Failures He
Bemoans Leaks as Bans
Press
by
Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book
Substack
UN GATE,
May 26 – How corrupt and
decrepit has the UN system
become under Antonio Guterres,
in this case due to Guterres?
On May 13, 2025
he sent sent a letter to
staff, leaked to Inner City
Press, in which Guterres
bemoans leaks: "I realize that
“leaks” and rumours may create
unnecessary anxiety. We are
currently in the proposals
development phase... It
is important to emphasize that
these internal consultations
and functional reviews are
preliminary steps aimed at
generating ideas and exploring
options. They do not represent
the final position of
management." We'll see.
Inner City Press,
which Guterres has banned from
"his" UN, has been sent a copy
of this staff letter, Part 1:
We are a group of
United Nations staff from
various duty stations across
the world. We once again call
for the resignation of the
Secretary-General (SG) for his
failure to preserve a credible
and reputable UN and for
triggering an unprecedented
financial crisis for the
organization. It seems that
our reiterated calls for his
resignation are ignored, and
that the SG, with its close
circle of Under Secretary
Generals (USGs) and senior
advisors supporting him, is
ready to sacrifice thousands
of staff and the integrity of
the UN, just to maintain his
and their grip on power. The
so called UN80 is the latest
in a series of decisions and
proposals, by the SG and his
acolytes, advanced purely to
fulfil their ideological
agenda, with total disregard
for the organization and its
staff. Therefore, we would
like to make some points clear
about the UN80
reform:
1) It is not true
that the staff are being
consulted: on the contrary,
the staff and the staff union
are kept in the dark and in
panic about the initiative.
All decisions are taken by the
SG and a few of his loyalists,
without any meaningful
consultations. This is the
first time in the history or
the UN that a reform is
developed so hastily and
imposed on staff and Member
States, without transparency
and consultations. The
authoritarian nature of the SG
and his inner circle is
finally visible to all.
2) The SG
has said that he wants to move
quickly with the reform to
ensure substantive reductions
in the overall budget of the
organization. In his plans,
UN80 envisages major changes
hat will require large numbers
of staff to move from one duty
station to another. Such
structural changes are very
expensive: it is, to say the
least, suspicious to see that
SG has not provided any cost
estimate for the
implementation of this reform.
It is obvious that the cost
involved will be very high and
clearly offsetting any
potential saving. Our question
is simple: Does the SG have
the resources for this reform?
What are its estimated costs
and envisaged savings? If this
information is not provided,
the speculation that this is
just a smokescreen intended to
preserve personal power, by
sacrificing the organization,
will turn out to be
correct.
3) The SG
also stated that the reform is
aimed at eliminating
duplications and putting an
end to the wasting of
resources. He indicated that
his primary objective will be
to reform the Department of
Political and Peacebuilding
Affairs, the Department of
Peace Operation and the Office
of Counter-Terrorism. However,
we all remember that these
three entities were created by
the current SG himself during
his first term. The SG
basically seems to admit that
his first reform was a failure
that led to duplications and a
waste of resources, but still
wants to undertake a new
reform, and wants to do
it when his mandate is
approaching its natural
end.
We strongly
believe that the SG does not
possess the skills and
capacity to reform the UN:
therefore, we hope that such
task is left to his successor.
The most efficient and cost
effective reform of the UN, in
our opinion, would require the
immediate resignation of the
SG, the subsequent resignation
of all current Under Secretary
Generals and other senior
political appointees, the
selection of a new and capable
SG, and the development of a
meaningful reform plan, to be
launched under a new
leadership and in close
consultation with us, the UN
staff.
Will the UN
answer the Press on Part I?
Part II to follow
Guterres had the
critical Press roughed
up and thrown out. There
has been no due process since,
not even a response to Guterres'
Melissa Fleming to a pro bono inquiry
for Inner City Press from the
law firm Quinn Emanuel. We'll
have more on this.
***
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