UN official wants sexual harassment charges dropped

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, wrote a letter to a staff member, who has accused him of sexual harassment, asking her to drop the complaint and promising to protect her from reprisals, according to a media report.

 

The charge against 65-year-old Lubbers, a former Dutch prime minister, has been under investigation by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services since it was filed on May 5. The complainant is a 51-year-old American with 20 years' service at the refugee agency and currently an administrator in its human resources department.

 

The New York Times quoted two UN staff members who have seen the correspondence as saying Lubbers wrote a two-page, typewritten letter to her home outside Geneva in May asking her to drop the charge and pledging that she would suffer no career consequences.

 

Later that month, the paper reported that he circulated an e-mail message

among his staff acknowledging that he was under investigation for sexual harassment and complaining that UN officials were expanding their probe to question others to see if there was "a broader context".

 

The message said, "In plain words: could they not find other women who had somewhat comparable experience with me?"

 

The people familiar with the case were quoted as saying that after the first woman complained to associates that Lubbers "grabbed her behind", four more women staffers told UN investigators of similar treatment. They, according to the Times report, said that the four women's allegations are contained in the investigators' final report, which Lubbers received in June.

 

Marie Okabe, a spokeswoman for Secretary General Kofi Annan, confirmed yesterday that the final report is now in New York awaiting official action but declined to discuss its contents or predict when Annan might act on it.

 

At the time the charge arose in May, a senior United Nations official in New York said Lubbers would have to resign if it were upheld.