UN’s António Guterres Needs to Make Sweeping Changes to Reform Scandal-Ridden Body

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Mike Buchanan

Telephone: +44 7967 026163

UN’s António Guterres Needs to Make Sweeping Changes to Reform Scandal-Ridden Body

January 4, 2024 – The United Nations has been beset by numerous scandals in recent years. December witnessed two more scandals at the international body. As a result, a growing number of persons have issued calls to reform, or even defund the United Nations.

The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms the “dignity and worth of the human person” and the “equal rights of men and women.” (1) But UN agencies have ignored this principle in order to embrace Marxist concepts of “oppressors” and “the oppressed.”

In the first incident, Sarah Douglas, Deputy Chief at UN Women, endorsed 153 tweets accusing Israel of “genocide” and other crimes. Douglas addressed a UN meeting via webcam with a large “Palestine” poster in the background. Such actions represent a breach of UN staffers’ obligation to be neutral and impartial (2).

In the second case, UN Women issued thousands of tweets making the claim that violence against women and girls “remains the most widespread and pervasive human rights violation worldwide.” (3) In truth, women commit domestic violence as often as men (4), and twice as many males as females are killed by injuries and violence (5).

The United Nations has expressed concerns about the problem of disinformation (6). But inexplicably, the UN General Assembly remained silent in the face of these repeated instances of disinformation by UN Women.

A range of other ethical, scientific, and human rights violations have been committed by UN agencies, as well:

Human Rights Council (7)
UNICEF (8)
UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (9)
World Health Organization (10)

Last month, U.S. senator Mike Lee introduced a bill to defund the United Nations (11). Days later, Israeli UN ambassador Gilad Erdan called for the defunding of key UN agencies (12). And several U.S. senators have called on UN Women to fire Sarah Douglas (13).

If the UN Secretary-General wants to counter the growing concerns with his organization, he needs to implement changes to stop treating Israel as an international pariah and assure equal programmatic attention is paid to both men and women.

The Domestic Abuse and Violence International Alliance – DAVIA — consists of 119 member organizations from 33 countries in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin America, and North America. DAVIA seeks to ensure that domestic violence and abuse polices are science-based, family-affirming, and gender-inclusive. https://endtodv.org/coalitions/davia/

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