Exclusive: UN political caste system drains workforce morale

In the early summer of 2022, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres broached an awkward topic with the Russian mission in New York: The head of the U.N. peace operation in Western Sahara, a Russian national named Alexander Ivanko, was involved in a romantic relationship with a local Moroccan woman and was planning to marry her. The relationship had become a political problem. It was cited in news reports about the disputed territory, where Morocco has been engaged in a decades-long military campaign to annex the former Spanish colony. The Polisario Front, an armed independence movement, formally complained that the relationship reinforced concerns that the U.N. held a pro-Moroccan bias. The U.N. was keen to head off a wedding. For some U.N. staffers, what is most disturbing about the exchange was not their boss’ dating activities, though such relationships are generally frowned upon, but that the U.N. chief felt it necessary to solicit Russian involvement to resolve what should have been a purely administrative problem involving an international civil servant. The outreach to Moscow, they contend, sent an unmistakable signal that Ivanko is the diplomatic equivalent of a “made man,” politically untouchable without the acquiescence of the Russian government. The high-level exchange reinforced a largely unspoken perception about life in the broader U.N. workforce — that those at the top of its food chain, principally those backed by powerful governments, are often shielded from accountability for bending the norms that govern the rest of the U.N. community. That reality, staffers say, has dissuaded U.N. headquarters from tackling a raft of more serious administrative crises in the West Saharan mission, including allegations of misconduct, conflicts of interest, excessive drinking and partying, and in one case, the alleged physical assault of a female officer by her male supervisor. “The whole mission is aware and so it makes everyone frustrated and unmotivated,” a U.N. staffer in Western Sahara told Devex in one of several email exchanges. “There [are] no rules and there is no justice, and certain people can just do or say anything, and nothing will happen.” Everyone at U.N. headquarters in New York knows what is happening, the staffer said, “but no one will lift a finger” because the mission’s leader is a Russian national. Other U.N. officials argue it is unfair to place all the blame on Ivanko, the first Russian national to lead a U.N. peace operation. They say that many of the mission’s failings — including discipline lapses, toxic bureaucratic turf wars, and spotty enforcement of rules — have become entrenched over decades of habit and neglect by U.N. headquarters. At least 55% of staff in the mission have served for more than 10 years, according to an internal 2021 U.N. audit. “People in this mission have been here so many years, and so many bad behaviors have become endemic. It’s easy to knock the top person off the perch,” said a senior U.N. official in the mission, formally known as the U.N Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, or MINURSO, of Ivanko. “You cannot lay all the bad behavior at his door.” This article is based on interviews with more than 20 former and current U.N. officials and is backed by internal audits, formal complaints, emails, texts, and other internal correspondence. Most have spoken to Devex anonymously because they were not authorized to speak on sensitive internal matters and out of fear of professional retaliation. Crisis of morale The situation in Western Sahara is part of a wider crisis of morale across the U.N.’s far-flung network of aid agencies, peace operations, and financial institutions. In recent years, internal surveys from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to the World Food Programme and the International Trade Center have revealed deep discontent among the rank and file over what they feel is impunity for managers who abuse their power, or deny opportunities to women, minorities, or employees who lack powerful benefactors. “Morale is at its lowest,” according to an anonymous complaint from a staffer at the U.N. International Trade Center in a survey conducted by the staff union in Geneva. “Many staff are quitting as the chaos is growing in several departments of the organization.” “There [are] no rules and there is no justice, and certain people can just do or say anything, and nothing will happen.” --— United Nations staffer in Western Sahara It is difficult to generalize on the basis of a handful of surveys in an organization that spans dozens of agencies employing more than 40,000 civilians, 90,000 or so peacekeepers, and large numbers of contractors. But many of the complaints and grievances have something in common: a pervasive sense that senior managers are rarely held accountable. An annual survey of staff views commissioned by the U.N. headquarters secretariat found that nearly a quarter of the 17,184 respondents — some 4,023 workers — said they faced discrimination on the basis of national origin, gender, cultural background, color, and ethnic origin. “Discrimination also emerges as a critical factor from the data,” according to the 2021 survey, which was obtained by Devex. “Most staff who reported incidents were not satisfied with the outcome which can undermine confidence that future situations will be handled well.” The survey sought to put a positive spin on the troubling data, noting that the “good news is that the majority of respondents have not experienced discrimination in the workplace.” But it acknowledged that “for those who have, there are broad and significant negative implications.” “Respondents who reported experiencing discrimination based on gender are predominantly women,” the survey said. “However, the highest frequency of gender discrimination was reported by respondents who identify as transgender women.” Despite those findings, the vast majority of U.N. workers who answered the questionnaire looked favorably at the direction the organization was headed, and an overwhelming 90% expressed pride in their work. But only 54% said they were satisfied with their careers at the organization. “There are serious issues about morale, transparency, accountability, diversity, gender equity, harassment, bullying, all of that,” said Amy Pope, who recently took unpaid leave as a senior official at the International Organization for Migration to campaign for its top job. “We have to ensure that our hiring, promoting, recruiting policies and practices are open and transparent, that there’s not a perception that if you’re the friend of somebody you’re going to be put in a position of influence or power.” UN caste system Under the terms of the U.N. Charter, employees are appointed on merit, with a view towards maintaining geographical diversity, and are expressly prohibited from taking instruction from their national governments. But in reality, jobs are parceled out to officials from the organization’s most powerful governments. The U.N.’s five permanent members of the Security Council — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States — have monopolies on the top cabinet posts dealing with political affairs, humanitarian relief, peacekeeping, economic development, and counterterrorism. The White House typically decides who gets to lead critical U.N. agencies such as the World Food Programme and UNICEF, making a mockery of the U.N. recruitment process, which involves assembling a short list of aspirants and conducting interviews with the candidates, most of whom have little hope of besting a political appointee. Other member states compete fiercely to have their nationals appointed to other top jobs. Susana Malcorra, a former Argentine foreign minister and U.N. chief of staff, once said that senior appointments are an “issue that is brought up by every single member state.” Several months ago, a senior official from the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, or ESCAP, told a gathering of Korean officials that the office had bent its own rules to appoint two male Koreans to critical jobs that required consideration of female candidates, according to a video that was leaked to Devex. The official, Adnan Aliani, ESCAP’s director for the Strategy and Programme Management Division, said the agency’s executive secretary, Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, had “to use a lot of her own political capital” with Guterres to hire one Korean candidate for a directorship. “When Korea had proposed that appointment it seemed rather almost impossible to get it through because we have this rule about gender parity,” Aliani said. The agency had similarly to “go out of our way and use our political capital” to secure the appointment of another male Korean nominee to a senior professional post, again overriding the U.N.’s gender parity policy, Aliani said. “All the requests that the government of Korea has made we have been able to fulfill,” he said. In a written response to Devex, Aliani confirmed the veracity of the recording but said he misspoke. “I regret the impact my statements had on all those concerned,” he wrote, emphasizing he had not been involved in the hiring process. He added that his agency’s management team “is taking steps to ensure that the correct facts of the recruitment process are shared.” There is nothing new about former U.N. ambassadors and other government officials being appointed to top U.N. posts. The U.N. secretariat’s administrative staff — secretaries and clerical workers — are barred from promotion to more senior professional posts, cutting off a critical avenue for advancement. Limits on staff rotations and movement have condemned many U.N. workers to the same duty station for years, or decades. Perennial efforts to reform human resources policies have run into opposition from member states. But under Guterres, political appointees have had a leg up even from lower-level positions, according to several U.N. officials. For instance, he stepped up the practice of hiring foreign government officials, on loan from their capitals, to manage affairs in his executive office, those officials told Devex. At the same time, he has marginalized some professional staff, even sidelining the U.N. Department of Political and Peacekeeping Affairs, or DPPA, from political missions like negotiations for the Black Sea Grain Initiative, according to these officials. “He thinks he does not need DPPA since he knows it all,” said one U.N. official. U.N.’s top spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric did not respond directly to the suggestion Guterres has sidelined his political affairs office, but said in an email: “The Secretary-General is very much focused doing his utmost to solve so many of the world’s pressing problems and will continue to do so using every tool at his disposal while respecting the [U.N.] charter. He continues to endeavor to select a diverse team of professionals to deliver the U.N.’s mandate in full respect of its values.” From Izvestia to Laayoune A former journalist for Russian daily broadsheet Izvestia with postings in Afghanistan and the United States, Alexander Ivanko is no Russian apparatchik. He has served with the U.N. most of his professional life, acting as spokesperson in Bosnia during the 1990s war and as head of the U.N. communications department in Kosovo. He gained a reputation as an independent player, infuriating Moscow with his relentless criticism of Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs. Colleagues say the war in Ukraine has weighed heavily on Ivanko, who has Ukrainian and Russian relatives. In a Facebook post days after the Russian invasion, Ivanko wrote: “I’ve been very, very sad for the past three days. Secondly, I didn’t think I would ever say this but thank God, thank God, my father Sergei Ivanko, a Ukrainian and WWII Veteran, didn’t live to see this.” Still, Russia — which has traditionally sided with Algeria, a supporter of Polisario, the anti-Morocco independence movement — backed Ivanko, who has served as the U.N. chief of staff in Western Sahara for more than a decade, for the top job there. It also defended his behavior in discussions with Guterres, noting that the U.N. knew about his relationship with a Moroccan woman before they appointed him to the top job, according to two U.N. sources, highlighting that other senior U.N. officials have fallen in love in the field without consequence. The two sources claimed that Guterres expressly urged the Russians to discourage Ivanko from marrying his fiancé. Dujarric denied that account, but confirmed Western Sahara had been discussed with Moscow. “I can tell you that indeed the Secretary-General spoke with Russian diplomats on several issues related to MINURSO,” Dujarric said. “At no time did the Secretary-General ask the Russians to intervene in Mr. Ivanko’s private life.” “There are serious issues about morale, transparency, accountability, diversity, gender equity, harassment, bullying, all of that.” --— Amy Pope, the U.S. candidate to lead the International Organization for Migration The episode emerged at a sensitive time in Guterres’ relationship with Russia. He has been engaged in a high-stakes diplomatic effort to maintain Russian backing for a landmark Black Sea grain deal, which permits Ukraine to export millions of tons of grain, easing pressure on global food prices. But he has been reluctant to confront Russia on unrelated issues, rebuffing a push by the U.S. and Europe to investigate Iranian drone sales to Moscow, according to a senior Western diplomat. And his alleged personal outreach to resolve the Ivanko affair sent a signal to staff that Russia must be handled with special care. In the end, a compromise appears to have been reached. Ivanko — who began dating his fiancée when she worked in his office — has put off marriage plans until he retires from the U.N., and the U.N. top brass has agreed to keep their concerns about Ivanko’s private life to themselves, according to one U.N. source briefed on the matter. Ivanko declined to comment on his plans. “Look, my personal life is personal and while I know that sometimes people like to gossip about these things, I’m not one of them,” he told Devex in an email. Dujarric also declined to comment on the matter: “As a rule, the United Nations does not disclose personal confidential information of staff members to the public,” he told Devex by email. A spokesperson at the Russian mission to the U.N. did not respond to a request for comment. A senior U.N. official noted that Ivanko’s fiancée quit her U.N. job to avoid any suggestion of impropriety as soon as the two began dating. The party house The U.N. Mission in Western Sahara was established in 1991 to monitor a ceasefire between Moroccan forces and Polisario’s independence fighters and pave the way for a referendum on self-determination. But the vote never took place, and there is little optimism it would achieve more than limited autonomy under Moroccan rule. Before leaving office, the Trump administration formally recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the region, dampening prospects for an independent Western Sahara. The U.N. mission, and its more than 460 personnel, including more than 240 police and troops, are monitoring a political stalemate with no end date. The mission has also come under scrutiny for its partying culture in a highly conservative Muslim region. Every Thursday, the U.N. hosts a happy hour at its compound, one of the few places where alcohol is served. Human resources chief Thomas Wilson III also serves as the mission’s informal DJ, regularly hosting parties at his house, one of the largest in the area, complete with flashing purple neon lights on a dance floor, bars, and electric guitars hanging from the ceiling. Three U.N. officials say local authorities have registered numerous complaints from local authorities. “His house is known as the party house,” said a recently retired manager at the mission, who requested anonymity out of fear of being denied future U.N. contract assignments for speaking publicly. “It looks very bad, this is Muslim territory,” said a female Muslim staffer, who declined to speak on the record for fear of retaliation. “For other Muslims and especially Muslim women like me, this is very hard to see and it is very embarrassing,” the official added. Other U.N. officials have defended the parties, noting that Western Sahara has virtually no recreational facilities to let off steam, and no public access to alcoholic beverages. “We are in the desert,” said one official. “MINURSO can be an isolating place to work for international staff for sure. There’s not that much to do, and sometimes morale suffers,” Ivanko wrote in his emailed remarks. “So we make an extra effort to try to help build a sense of community through staff welfare events such as sponsored trips, food fairs, national day celebrations, providing common space to watch major sporting events, social gatherings and the like.” Ivanko himself has also gained a reputation as a hard drinker, who parties late into the night and rarely shows up in the office before noon. “Alex is a typical Russian,” said the retired mission management official, who recalled sharing drinks with Ivanko. But the official insisted that “alcohol never impinged on his ability to do his work” and that Ivanko had moderated his drinking habits since ascending to the top job. But he said he was surprised that Ivanko was promoted, scaling two pay grades that would have been unthinkable without Moscow’s backing. “The relationship with the Moroccan [woman] hasn’t helped,” he added. “It certainly hasn’t helped with the political situation of the mission because obviously the Polisario, or the Frente Polisario as they are called, will not talk to him.” Ivanko’s defenders say that morale has improved during his tenure, noting that he secured pay raises for local staff to compensate for soaring inflation. He reversed a decision to reduce subsistence allowance for military peacekeepers. He has also made progress with the Polisario, negotiating the resumption of regular resupply flights and in recent weeks, negotiated the first ground supply convoy into Polisario territory in years. U.N. staffers who spoke to Devex offered varying accounts of the impact of Ivanko’s drinking on his work, with some saying that he exhibits erratic behavior and frequently shouts at staff. But others defended him, saying he is being singled out because he is a Russian at a time when Russian nationals face discrimination for the crimes of their leader. “Alex being Russian is not the issue,” said one U.N. official in MINURSO. “He is approachable; he has a real open-door policy. He is a decent person who tries to help whenever he can and whoever.” “Look, Alex is imperfect, as we all are, but I can tell you one thing: every day he’s on this file he tries to fix what’s broken and every day he tries to make a goddamn difference,” added a senior U.N. official now serving with MINURSO. Ivanko, meanwhile, declined to comment on his drinking. Impunity Ivanko has been unable to resolve the mission’s internal disputes or hold his top lieutenants accountable for management shortcomings and alleged misconduct, according to some current and former U.N. critics. U.N. headquarters, meanwhile, has failed to stabilize a mission wracked by internal turmoil, effectively dismissing multiple complaints from staffers, according to several current and former U.N. officials. Wilson, the human resources chief in the Western Sahara mission, has been at the center of the bureaucratic drama, the target of criticism in a 2021 audit by the U.N. internal oversight office that found he recruited staff to posts without consulting the relevant hiring managers, contrary to U.N. recruitment guidelines. Hiring U.N. staff has traditionally been a tedious, lengthy affair, requiring approval from U.N. member states, a process that could delay an appointment for more than a year. In an effort to improve efficiency, the U.N. membership in 2019 decided to grant the mission’s leader authority to “reclassify” jobs — that is, to take money from a vacant post in one department to fund another more critical post elsewhere in the mission. The arrangement has empowered Wilson, who has taken the lead in reclassifying mission posts, thereby sidelining department chiefs, according to several current and former U.N. officials. Wilson is the subject of formal complaints that he abused his power by placing favorites in key jobs. Wilson has countered that he is the target of retaliation by colleagues who have improperly sought to influence the recruitment process. In the summer of 2020, Wilson clashed with his direct supervisor, Stanislava Daskalova, after she criticized his handling of a job placement case as “inappropriate,” according to an email of their exchange, which was reviewed by Devex. Wilson fired back, implying her treatment of him was informed by his race. “I can accept anything but will never in my lifetime for as long [as] I work for the UN accept constant DISRESPECT, INSULTS from Stanislava with a willful attempt by her to project superiority over people of color,” Wilson wrote to Daskalova and her boss, Veneranda Mukandoli-Jefferson, in a July 8, 2020, email seen by Devex. The exchange, Daskalova wrote in one of the emails, wasn’t the first time she had butted heads with Wilson, recalling she had “pointed out weakness in his and HR work on many occasions.” Wilson made her a “target of his constant intimidation and scare tactics – he has long used the threat of complaint against me as a way of deterring me to perform my functions,” she wrote in a July 9 email. Before coming to Western Sahara, she added, she would never have “believed that a supervisor can be abused by the supervised staff.” The then-special representative of the secretary-general, Colin Stewart, sided with Daskalova, saying he agreed with her contention “that the root of the matter is Wilson resisting any serious scrutiny of his work.” All staff members, including the special representative himself, “must advise their supervisors to the best of their ability, but then implement the supervisor’s decision fully and dutifully once it is made,” Stewart told Wilson in a July 9, 2020, email. “Managerial decisions are not matters of consensus.” “Racism or unsupported accusations of racism are both red lines that cannot be crossed in the UN,” Stewart warned. “If you or any other staff member accuses another staff member of racism without credible evidence, you will be the subject of a formal investigation.” Daskalova declined a request for comment, referring Devex to the U.N. press office. Wilson also declined to comment on the exchange. Stewart did not respond to several requests for comment by email. Ivanko has shown greater sympathy for Wilson’s conduct, according to current and former U.N. officials. Last May, Wilson and Daskalova’s boss, Mukandoli-Jefferson, filed a formal complaint to Ivanko accusing Wilson of hiring an under-qualified woman for a job in his office. A more qualified candidate, Mukandoli-Jefferson claimed, had been improperly removed from the roster of candidates. She requested that the recruitment process be investigated. “My concern is again transparency and fairness towards each applicant,” Mukandoli-Jefferson wrote. “I have nothing against the candidate. There is bad faith from the beginning by not mentioning that one of the applicant[s] was on the existing roster.” Wilson declined to comment on the case. But a paper outlining his defense asserted that Mukandoli-Jefferson was retaliating because he had previously accused her of misconduct. The paper, which included sensitive internal information, was emailed anonymously to Devex. We have not been able to identify the sender. “All allegations are frivolous and vengeful,” the paper quoted Wilson saying. “They were made out of malice in retaliation for the case of abuse of authority filed against the CMS [Chief of Mission Support].” Mukandoli-Jefferson denied she retaliated. “I categorically refute these allegations. There is nothing. These are just fabrications to cover up,” she told Devex. The complaint by Mukandoli-Jefferson was referred to the U.N.’s internal investigations unit in New York, the Office of Internal Oversight, or OIOS, which kicked the matter back to the mission’s leadership, according to an internal document reviewed by Devex. It noted that the long-standing dispute between Wilson and Mukandoli-Jefferson “is having a detrimental impact on the mission and encourages the mission to seek alternative dispute resolution mechanisms.” It found “no evidence of misconduct warranting an OIOS investigation” but suggested the mission might reopen the job search for the post. Ben Swanson, the U.N. assistant secretary-general in OIOS, told Devex that his office has seen a dramatic increase in misconduct complaints — from 580 in 2016 to 1,313 in 2021, a figure that he estimates will approach 1,750 in 2023. Since January 1, 2020, it has received 48 complaints from the mission in Western Sahara. “A significant proportion of the complaints and ensuing cross complaints relate to interpersonal disputes involving the same individuals,” Swanson wrote in an email to Devex. “This increased level of demand has meant that our focus has to be kept on investigating serious misconduct such as sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, retaliation, racism and fraud and corruption,” he wrote. Swanson’s agency lacks the resources to “deal with matters that can more appropriately be dealt with by some form of management intervention.” Swanson declined to discuss specific individuals or cases, citing the confidential nature of U.N. internal investigations. But several sources told Devex that the investigation unit launched a probe in recent years into a massive insurance fraud case involving national staff, resulting in the dismissal in late 2021 of more than 20 national staff members in the mission. A 2021 internal audit by Swanson’s department surveyed 178 staff members in Western Sahara and concluded that fewer than half — about 40% — believed the mission’s management encouraged ethical conduct. The audit — conducted between November 2019 and January 2020, when Ivanko served as the mission’s chief of staff — also cited staff concerns about the abuse of authority, low morale, and poor communication from managers. Some U.N. staffers say that Ivanko never acted on the recommendations to address the disputes among staff, though he did forward a recent separate complaint against Wilson to the internal oversight office in New York. Eddy Khawaja, the chief security officer at the U.N. Mission in Western Sahara, accused Wilson of abusing his authority by forcing the security unit to hire his preferred candidate, undercutting the security department’s authority to hire staff, according to a formal complaint reviewed by Devex. Wilson again dismissed the claim as another act of retaliation, citing a previous dispute between the two men after Wilson docked 20 days of annual leave from Khawaja on the grounds he had failed to appropriately claim for sick leave during the pandemic, according to the email defending Wilson. The dispute culminated in a highly charged meeting, during which Khawaja shouted and cursed at Wilson, according to an internal U.N. document. Ivanko declined to address the specifics of the complaints, but downplayed the significance of some of the mission’s internal strife. “MINURSO is a small mission and sometimes it’s true that interpersonal relationships can be fraught, and what might otherwise be a petty grievance or minor disagreement gets magnified and becomes a major issue,” Ivanko said. “This is unfortunate, but it’s the reality of life in a small operation in a small place.” U.N. officials said that Wilson has clashed with other staffers, but that Ivanko has declined to take action. “Alex refuses to believe Thomas can do anything wrong,” said a MINURSO official. “That means Thomas has impunity.” An alleged assault Perhaps the most troubling case at the Western Sahara mission involved a claim by a female peacekeeper that the U.N. compelled her to recant an allegation that she was assaulted by her male boss, according to several current and former U.N. officials. The alleged victim, a French officer, began a consensual romantic relationship with her alleged abuser, an Egyptian officer, last September. A couple of months later, the relationship soured as he grew increasingly jealous of her interaction with male colleagues and expressed increasing disapproval of her dress, which he viewed as provocative, according to two current and former U.N. sources familiar with the incident. In January, the Egyptian allegedly erupted in anger and grabbed her by the throat, according to four current and former U.N. sources. There were no witnesses, and Devex was not able to independently verify the claim. The Egyptian officer has denied he physically abused her, according to a former U.N. official. But the woman reported the incident informally to at least two other peacekeepers, and the matter was brought to the attention of the deputy force commander, Faustina Boakyewaa Anokye, who told her she had two options: She could register a formal complaint or she could try to reach some mediated agreement. Anokye did not respond to an emailed request for comment. In the end, the woman decided not to file a formal complaint, as the two were scheduled to wrap up their service in Western Sahara in the first week of February, and they worked out a compromise to resolve the matter. He would not retaliate against her or her colleagues or have any contact with her, and she would not pursue the matter, according to several current and former U.N. sources. But two days before they were scheduled to leave Western Sahara, the Egyptian officer insisted that wasn't enough, and that his government felt the informal agreement did not adequately clear his name, according to a Feb. 17 email from the French woman to Ivanko and other senior U.N. officials. Egypt is the sixth largest contributor of peacekeepers to U.N. missions, with more than 2,800 blue helmets deployed at the end in 2022. The woman wrote in the Feb. 17 email that she was subsequently compelled under “pressure and black mail” to formally withdraw her complaint and deny all her allegations of abuse. The latest complaint has triggered a formal investigation by the U.N. internal oversight. That investigation is ongoing. She wrote that she received a call on Feb. 1 from the U.N.’s chief of the conduct and discipline unit, Olubuckola “Buky” Awoyemi, to discuss her complaint. When she arrived at her office, she was confronted by her alleged attacker, who threatened to file a complaint against her and forward it to the French government, which had a strict policy prohibiting sexual relations with members of other militaries. “In a panic,” the woman wrote, “I would write anything he wished in order to calm down his country, that he could write a draft for me but that I begged him not to try anything against me.” “Bouki then advised me to write this mail to withdraw my complaint so that each of us can return in peace to our respective countries and that our careers are not sullied by this story.” At the end of the meeting, the Egyptian officer “told me I should be ashamed of what I am doing, that he wished me an honest life and the best and safe return to France.” “I would like to take this opportunity to denounce the procedure and the actions of the ‘Conduct and Discipline’ office,” she wrote. “I also denounce a system that protects men and abuses against women while we are told about “women's rights” on a daily basis.” The French officer declined a request to comment on the case and the Egyptian did not respond to a request for comment on his cell phone. A senior U.N. official, meanwhile, defended Awoyemi, saying “She’s an excellent lawyer, and very good at what she does. She’s always supporting women.”