June 28, 2012 By Robert Amsterdam

How the United Nations Fails to Protect Whistleblowers

Given my clear interest in UN ethics matters given the case of Georges Tadonki, a UN Humanitarian Coordinator who faced life-threatening harrassment for having exposed a cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe, I wanted to point our readers’ attention toward an article published in The Guardian today by Julian Borger.  Excerpt below:

A landmark case brought by a former United Nations employee against the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has cast light on what activists describe as a pervasive culture of impunity in an organisation where whistleblowers are given minimal protection from reprisals.

James Wasserstrom, a veteran American diplomat, was sacked and then detained by UN police, who ransacked his flat, searched his car and put his picture on a wanted poster after he raised suspicions in 2007 about corruption in the senior ranks of the UN mission in Kosovo (Unmik).