Dr. Gaya Gamhewage told country delegations at this year’s World Health Assembly in Geneva to expect the number of sexual misconduct cases at the World Health Organization to further increase — a declaration that could easily raise eyebrows among the agency’s critics, and even its supporters.
In 2022 and up to the first quarter of 2023, WHO received a total of 157 allegations of sexual misconduct, a seven-fold increase from reported sexual harassment and abuse allegations in 2021.
But this should not be a cause of alarm, said Gamhewage, who's charged with preventing sexual misconduct at WHO, in a wide-ranging interview with Devex. Instead, this should be seen as the result of increased confidence in WHO’s justice system, she said, a remark that has become the organization’s common refrain to questions over high numbers of sexual misconduct cases at the agency.