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AP Exclusive: UN Rights Staff Fear for Jobs Amid Abuse Case

Published

10 years ago

May 29, 2015

In this Feb. 13, 2006, file photo, Anders Kompass, the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights representative in Guatemala, speaks with members of the media during a news conference in Guatemala City. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo, File)

CARA ANNA, Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N.’s mishandling of child sexual abuse claims against French soldiers has human rights staffers fearing for their jobs as they struggle with how to respond to highly sensitive allegations in the future, according to a letter to the world body’s human rights chief obtained by The Associated Press.

In a separate letter to the U.N. secretary-general, a woman who worked directly under the U.N. staffer who was suspended for alerting French authorities is protesting her dismissal last week, a day before she says she was to testify in support of him for an internal U.N. investigation.

A year after the U.N. first heard children as young as 9 describe how they were given cookies or water bottles in exchange for sodomy or oral sex by French soldiers protecting their displaced persons camp in conflict-torn Central African Republic, it seems the only person who has been punished is the staffer who told the French. France has not announced any arrests and this week said it was still investigating.

In statements marked “strictly confidential” and first reported by the AP this week, the U.N. deputy high commissioner for human rights in March said she had “failed to follow up” on the allegations gathered by her own office, even as French authorities pressed U.N. officials for several months for more information.

The U.N. first heard of the allegations in May 2014 through a human rights staffer with the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Central African Republic. On Friday, the U.N. peacekeeping chief, Herve Ladsous, said he didn’t hear of the allegations until this spring. When asked why the head of the mission didn’t tell him immediately, Ladsous said, “Some reporting lines maybe didn’t function.”

The two new letters indicate a crisis in an office that says it “represents the world’s commitment to universal ideals of human dignity.”

The letter dated May 8 from U.N. human rights field staffers is an angry response to last month’s suspension of colleague Anders Kompass for telling French authorities, a decision that the U.N. Dispute Tribunal reversed this month. The U.N. says Kompass breached protocol in sharing the report of children’s allegations without redacting the names in it. An internal investigation continues, and he could be fired.

“What could have been a success story showing the world how we act is, once again, a failure for the U.N.,” says the letter to the high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein. It is not clear how many people signed it.

“What should be the role of a human rights officer while confronting serious allegations of human rights abuses?” the letter asks. “Will we be able to do our work without fearing punishment and retaliation?”

A spokesman for the human rights office, Andre-Michel Essoungou, said Thursday that he had not seen the letter. “Ultimately, though, the issue is not whether staff should fear anything when they act but about sharing information without protecting victims/witnesses as we should,” he said in an email.

In a separate May 23 letter to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, Miranda Brown says her dismissal this month “bears all the hallmarks of retaliation.” Her letter says she was the acting director of the human rights office’s Africa branch, working directly under Kompass, shortly after the report with the children’s allegations reached the office’s Geneva headquarters last summer.

Brown’s letter says she was the “key contact” at the time between the office and the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Central African Republic. The French soldiers were supporting the mission under a U.N. mandate.

Her letter notes the rumor that a second staffer, a woman, had also given the allegations to the French, and Brown says it wasn’t her. A confidential statement by Zeid dated late March, obtained by the AP, mentions “not one but possibly two sources.”

If the U.N. wants a complete investigation into how the child sexual abuse allegations were handled, it will need Brown’s testimony, her letter says.

Brown asserts that under Swiss law she is no longer protected against a possible defamation claim for giving testimony in the U.N. internal investigation, now that she no longer works for the United Nations.

Her letter says she was terminated May 21. The next day, an investigator with the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services was still asking her to testify, a copy of the email request shows. The investigator says he isn’t clear how the immunity issue would affect her. Another email from the office, shortly after Brown was told in mid-May she would be dismissed, invites her to testify between May 19 and 22. A third email calls the matter “rather urgent.”

Brown has criticized the U.N.’s whistleblower protections in the past, and in her latest letter she worries that’s being used against her.

On Thursday, Brown said she has had no response. Spokesmen for Ban had no immediate comment.

The spokesman for the secretary-general, Stephane Dujarric, this week told reporters that the current investigation will look into how the entire U.N. system handled the child sexual abuse allegations, but U.N. employees have expressed doubt that it will look beyond what the U.N. human rights chief has called the “leak” to the French.

Kompass has not spoken publicly because the case is under investigation.

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Newsom, Pelosi Welcome Election of First American Pope; Call for Unity and Compassion

“In his first address, he reminded us that God loves each and every person,” said Newsom. “We trust that he will shepherd us through the best of the Church’s teachings: to respect human dignity, care for the poor, and wish for the common good of us all.” Newsom also expressed hope that the pontiff’s leadership would serve as a unifying force in a time of global instability.

Published

4 weeks ago

May 19, 2025

Oakland Post

Pope Leo XIV. Screenshot.

By Bo Tefu, California Black Media

Gov. Gavin Newsom and First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom on May 8 issued a statement congratulating Pope Leo XIV on his historic election as the first American to lead the Catholic Church.

The announcement has drawn widespread reaction from U.S. leaders, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who called the moment spiritually significant and aligned with the values of service and social justice.

In their statement, the Newsoms expressed hope that the newly elected pope would guide the Church with a focus on compassion, dignity, and care for the most vulnerable. Newsom said he and the First Partner joined others around the world in celebrating the milestone and were encouraged by the pope’s first message.

Newsom also expressed hope that the pontiff’s leadership would serve as a unifying force in a time of global instability.

“May he remind us that our better angels are not far away — they’re always within us, waiting to be heard,” he said.

Pelosi, a devout Catholic, also welcomed the pope’s election and noted his symbolic connection to earlier church leaders who championed workers’ rights and social equality.

“It is heartening that His Holiness continued the blessing that Pope Francis gave on Easter Sunday: ‘God loves everyone. Evil will not prevail,’” said Pelosi.

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Retired Bay Area Journalist Finds Success in Paris with Black History Tours

In the late 90s, Stevenson finally realized her dream of living in Paris, now with her daughter. She started exploring the history of Africans in the city and would go on to teach others the same. Her business, which she named Black Paris Tours (BPT), received a significant boost when a family friend gave her a stack of cash and encouraged her to expand on the knowledge that she had only started to share with people she knew.

Published

4 months ago

February 18, 2025

Oakland Post

Ricki Stevenson, Blacks in Paris. Courtesy photo.

By Post Staff

There were two things Oakland-born, East Palo Alto-raised Ricki Stevenson always dreamed of:

Going to New York as a newscaster to tell the true story of Blacks in America.
Living and working in Paris one day.

Her dreams of life in Paris began when she was three years old and her mother, a former professional dancer, took her to see Josephine Baker perform. She was 11 when her parents took her to the Stanford University campus to meet James Baldwin, who was speaking about his book, “The Fire Next Time.” Ricki says that’s when she knew she’d one day live in Paris, “the city of light!”

But before that would ever happen, she had a tumultuous career as a newscaster across the country that was inspired by her family’s history.

Stevenson recalls marching with Cesar Chavez as he fought for labor rights for farm workers in California.

“Are we Mexican too?” she asked her parents. “No, but we will fight for everyone’s human rights,” they responded to her.

Ironically, Ricki’s paternal family roots went back to Greenwood, Oklahoma, infamous for the 1921 bombing of Black Wall Street. A time when Black people had oil wells, banks, and a thriving business community.

This background would propel her into a 25-year journalism career that gave her the opportunity to interview greats like President Jimmy Carter, PLO leader Yassir Arafat, James Baldwin, Rev. Jesse Jackson, UN Ambassador Andrew Young, Miriam Makeba, and the leaders of South African liberation movements.

A job offer from KCBS radio brought her back to the Bay Area in the 1980s. Then came the switch to TV when she was hired as a Silicon Valley business reporter with KSTS TV, working at the first Black-owned television station in northern CA (created and owned by John Douglas). Along the way, Stevenson worked as an entertainment reporter with BET; coproduced, with her disc jockey brother Isaac, a Bay Area show called “Magic Number Video;” lived in Saudi Arabia; worked as an international travel reporter with News Travel Network; and worked at KRON TV a news anchor and talk show host.

In 1997, Stevenson realized her dream of living in Paris with her young daughter, Dedie. She started exploring the history of Africans in the city and would go on to teach others the same. Her business, which she named Black Paris Tours (BPT), received a significant boost when a family friend, Admiral Robert Toney put a chunk of money in her hand. He said, “Ricki, my wife and I have been coming to Paris for 20 years, but in just two days with you and Dedie, we’ve learned and seen more than we ever did before.”

Years after BPT took off, Ricki met Nawo Carol Crawford and Miguel Overton Guerra, who she recruited as senior scholar guides for Black Paris Tours.

Guerra says he is proud of his work with Black Paris Tours in that it provides a wealth of information about the rich legacy of African and African American history and influence in Paris and Europe.

“I tend to have a feeling for history always being a means of a reference point backwards … you start to understand the history, that it isn’t just the United States, that it began with African people,” Guerra says.

He said that it’s been a pleasure to watch people learn something they didn’t know before and to take them through the city to key points in Black history, like hangout spots for writers like Baldwin and Richard Wright, restaurants in the busiest parts of Paris, the home of Josephine Baker and so much more.

Although the tours are open to all, Guerra hopes that those of African descent from all over the world can embrace that they don’t have to just stay where they are because movies and media have portrayed cities like Paris to be only white, it’s multicultural and accepting to all.

“We’ve been here, and we’ve been there, going way back when. And we shouldn’t be considered or consider ourselves to be strangers in any place that we go to,” he said.

Stevenson notes they’ve had 150,000 people take their tour over the years, with notables like former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, Smokey Robinson, Steve Harvey, Miriam Makeba, and more.

Friends and former media colleagues of Stevenson compliment the BPT crew on their knowledge of the city and their ability to always keep it interesting.

“He [Guerra] just had a deep, deep wealth of knowledge and he was constantly supplanting information with historical facts and the like. I love that it was demonstrating and showing how Black people have thrived in Paris or contributed to the culture in Paris,” Candice Francis said.

She toured in the summer of 2022 and stated that in the two weeks that they visited Paris, BPT was the highlight of her trip. She shared that she was proud of Stevenson and the life she’d managed to manifest and build for herself.

“Even if you’re visiting Paris for the tenth time, if you haven’t taken the tour, then by all means, take it,” Francis emphasized.

Magaly Muñoz, Gay Plair and Paul Cobb also contributed to this story. You can book your own adventure with Black Paris Tours at www.blackparistour.com.

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COMMENTARY: Will a Dictator’s Loss Change Trump’s Tune?

What’s happened in Syria has the potential of reshaping the politics of the entire Middle East. The U.S. can’t afford to sit back and do nothing. Now is the time to exert peaceful, diplomatic influence on how Syria maintains stability and goes forward with a new democracy.

Published

6 months ago

December 24, 2024

Oakland Post

iStock.

By Emil Guillermo

In our polarized country, half of America can’t wait, while many of us still wonder, “where’s Kamala?”

I hope President-elect Trump — who famously said during the campaign that he’d be a dictator on day one — eats his words.

Dictators aren’t doing so well these days.

Last weekend, the dictator Bashar al-Assad was run out of Syria and sought exile with his puppet master/dictator Vladimir Putin of Russia. In just about two weeks, a coalition of rebels applied enough pressure to end a family regime in Syria that lasted 50 years.

al-Assad’s wealthy family dictatorship plundered Syria and ruled in terror.

It sounds all too familiar to Filipino Americans, many of whom came to the U.S. fleeing the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

al-Assad’s end was different from the Filipinos who forged a peaceful People Power movement that chased the Marcos family to Hawaii where they sought refuge from their U.S. puppet handlers.

But as in Manila, there was cheering on the streets of Syria. Men, women, and children. Christian, Muslims, different sects and ethnicities, all united against al-Assad.

al-Assad has been described as a genocidal narco-trafficking tyrant, whose friends were America’s biggest enemies, Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia, said Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, on CNN.

Moustafa said it was amazing that there would be no more Russian airstrikes, no more al-Assad gulags torturing civilians. “To see good triumph over evil is an amazing thing,” he added.

But last weekend has some trickle down.

Consider that we are talking about al-Assad, the one Tulsi Gabbard consorted with and hyped to her colleagues when she was in Congress. Now Assad has been shamed into exile with his puppet master Russia, and Gabbard wants to be the U.S. director of national security? Given her wrongheaded judgment on al-Assad, can she be trusted with any national secrets?

It’s still not over in Syria, as now there will be a scramble to see what kind of governing democracy emerges.

Predictably, Donald Trump has said, “The United States should have nothing to do with it. This is not our fight. Let it play out. Do not get involved.”

Nouveau isolationism?

Overall, the ouster of the dictator should give Trump pause.

If by nominating MAGA loyalists like Gabbard, Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel, Trump’s testing the evolution to strongman rule in the U.S., he should consider what happened before last weekend.

In South Korea, a weak president tried to declare martial law and was voted down by Parliament. That’s a faux strongman.

Let’s hope Trump learns a lesson from the week’s news.

The next president sets the tone for a politics that’s already toxic.

He needs to remember the joy in Syria this week when an autocrat was dumped in the name of freedom and democracy.

About the Author

Emil Guillermo is an award-winning Bay Area journalist. His commentaries are on YouTube.com/@emilamok1. Or join him at www.patreon.com/emilamok