UN employees have mixed response after WFP tells staff not to participate in women's marches

The World Food Program has asked staff not to attend Saturday’s Global Women’s March as it would be against international civil services codes of conduct, Devex has learned.

In an email sent to the agency’s staff seen by Devex, an ethics office at the WFP said the marches — which are being held around the world to highlight issues that impact women — were “conceived as a reaction to the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States,” and thus not appropriate for staff to attend.

Thousands of protesters are predicted to take to the streets in Washington, D.C., for the Women’s March on the capital scheduled for the day after Trump’s inauguration, and an estimated 370 global sister marches are set to take place around the world. The march movement, according to the official website, is “not a U.S. election-specific protest per se,” but intended to rally people to “defend women’s rights and those of others in response to the rising rhetoric of far-right populism around the world.”