Thread by @althecat

Hey Google,

Design me a chart to discourage 150,000 @UN staff members from reporting wrongdoing.

https://twitter.com/althecat/status/1541438321838227458

This is part 2, two threads on the #UNWhistleblowers furore occasioned by the release last week (Tuesday @BBC & Wednesday @RSInews) of 2 documentaries highlighting deficiencies in the UN's application of its #Whistleblowing policy.

Part 1 >>

https://twitter.com/althecat/status/1541351254504374272?s=20&t=51i1XrXS1b9QjGqZ2Wamdg

The rest of this thread consists of a series of videos showing how two #UNWhistleblowing investigations bodies the UN's "Ethics Office" (un.org/en/ethics/l) & the OIOS (Office of Internal Oversight Services >> oios.un.org) misconduct reporting system works.

This is the page where reports of wrong-doing are supposed to be sent in by @UN staff >> oios.un.org/report-wrongdo…

Between 2012 and 2016 over 10,000 reports were submitted albeit mostly to line managers rather than through this system.

The OIOS has a staff of 114 and a budget of $20 million. documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/…

And now we get to the videos. Beginning with a video of an audio recording with ASG Ben Swanson, head of the UN's OIOS office. This recording is in the new @BBC documentary, where it is authenticated by former OIOS member @PeterAGallo.

@BBC @PeterAGallo In the video Swanson describes being called to a meeting with the UNSG @antonioguterres to discuss the issue of sexual harassment in the wake of the #MeToo movement.

Swanson says that when he tries to raise the issue of culture within the UN with an example of an ASG (same rank as himself) accused of putting his hand down the pants of a subordinate female manager, he is shutdown. "I tried to tell this story and I was cut dead," he says.

In the next Ben Swanson OIOS Chief video he talks about a plan for managing the numbers of "retaliation investigations", by shutting them down quickly which will he says "get the Americans off our backs".

A fragment of this audio is contained in this tweet from one of the BBC Doco #UNWhistleblowers, @EmmaReillyTweet

https://twitter.com/EmmaReillyTweet/status/1538476010957590531?s=20&t=976p_kM5R5OFbyfgd3kSFQ

The scheme OIOS describes in this audio - in a conversation with colleagues - is essentially a scheme to avoid conducting proper retaliation investigations (which are long and expensive) through a deft piece of what could be described as "legal trickery".

Senior managers accused of "retaliation" against whistleblowers are advised of the accusations against them and given 10 days to write back and "explain why they are not-guilty" of the things they are accused of.

Swanson explains how this new method has reduced the investigation time from 247 days to about 45 days. "The managers invariably write back and say, 'I didn't know anything about a protected act and this is nonsense all I did was send out an email telling people to behave'.

"We then have to make the judgment, is it worth getting 64 GB of email to make sure that all they hadn't only sent the email out, or do we take their word, their sworn statement, and say to the Ethics Office, 'well there is never ever going to be any sanction imposed for this...

... retaliatory act or whatever it is called. Effectively we are doing the Ethics Office's job, but they have swallowed it up and they've accepted it.... we've done 2 now and we have another 2 in the pipeline and it is working quite nicely. That gets the figures down....

That gets the American's off the UN's back. And it means they don't reduce their contribution." - UN OIOS ASG Ben Swanson.
["Contribution" = the US budgetary funding to the UN - which was the main issue that the UNSG's meeting in the previous video seemed to be concerned about.]

We will return to Mr Swanson later but next we have a video of Ella Armstrong Director of the @UN Ethics Office >> un.org/sg/en/content/…

Talking about her in principle issues wrt the legal issues raised by changing of the "burden of proof" in cases of protected disclosure.

"This is against the basic principles of justice.... it inverts this... its used in rare cases in unjust enrichment and whistleblower protection... today we complain against whistleblower, tomorrow we are subject of that complaint. Do we want [this]."

Its not entirely clear who Ella Armstrong is talking to here, but she is sitting next to the OIOS sign and at a guess I would say it is senior @UN leadership, ASG's (Assistant Sec. Gen.) and comparable senior management.

Returning to Ben Swanson (who looks like he will be the fall guy if anyone actually cares about this in the UN) here we see him talking about a particular case that of Tony Wilson in a disparaging manner.

And here we have Tony Wilson who was a senior financial management official in the UN before becoming a #UNWhistleblower whose case was at the time of this hearing of the Independent Audit Advisory Committee (IAAC) 450 days old.

The video certainly provides an indication of frustrations in the process and from the look of this June 2019 judgment wrt to Mr Wilson's case, he waited a lot longer than 450 days, whatever the @UN system is, it is definitely not efficient. un.org/en/internaljus…

Finally we have a muppet mockup video parodying the #UNWhistleblowing processes shortcomings.

/ENDS

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