In this podcast, Jason Poblete speaks with international lawyer Ms. Emma Reilly, a United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Human Rights Officer and whistleblower. Since 2013, Emma has been calling attention to a troubling practice at the UNHRC that has endangered the lives of dissidents and other human rights abuse victims who visit or testify at the UN. Despite well-documented evidence of wrongdoing by U.N. personnel, it took seven years for Ms. Reilly to secure whistleblower status. When she did, she was exiled to the U.N. bureaucracy's bowels to work on matters that appear designed to silence her and as retribution for standing up to Communist China and China’s supporters working in the UN system.
The UNHRC, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, is made up of 47 member states, including the United States. Under U.S. law, the United States is supposed to withhold as much as 15% of our tax dollars from U.N. agencies that fail to provide mechanisms to protect whistleblowers and others who ensure the organization's responsible behavior. Emma has written to several U.S. policymakers including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Chris Smith. The Biden administration and Congress should take a close look at Emma's case. Current and former U.N. officials are endangering the lives of human rights victims and other civil society leaders. The practice must stop and those who put dissidents and their families in danger should be to account.
More than 37,000 employees work for the United Nations in offices in 193 nations. According to UN data, these men and women are supposed to "maintain international peace and security, foster sustainable development and promote human rights." Think of it this way, if the UN were a corporation it employs about the same number of employees as Hobby Lobby yet Hobby Lobby has annual revenues of $5 billion a year, the UN, nothing. The UN relies on charity or financial donations provided by taxpayers of the member nations - in other words, you! Corporations are held to account by markets, shareholders, and customers.
If a company delivers a bad product or service or fails to manage the bad employees, companies lose business. The marketplace is a powerful check on the private sector. Meanwhile, the UN operates, at times, with relative impunity, where no one is really held to account until it's too late; it is also so far removed from the people who fund it that, effectively, taxpayers have no way to reign in the bureaucracy.
Emma's efforts at the Human Rights Council is not the first time whistleblowers have been pressured by U.N. leadership and it will not be the last. The United Nations is broken and China is one of the leading manipulators of the system. By supporting whistle-blowers such as Emma or demanding that your Member of Congress vote to withhold your tax dollars from broken UN agencies are some of the ways you can hold the U.N. to account when its employees and management break the rules.
Further Reading
U.S. Funding to the United Nations System: Overview and Selected Policy Issues, Congressional Research Service (Mar. 10, 2020).
Leaked Emails Confirm UN Gave Names of Dissidents to CCP, Epoch Times (Feb. 25, 2021).
Members of Congress Demand Accountability at the United Nations (whistleblower, UN, WIPO), Congressional Record (Feb. 29, 2016).
The United Nations: Urgent Problems that Need Congressional Action, 112th Cong., hearing transcript (Jan. 25, 2011).
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United Nations Corruption Endangering Human Rights Activists, a Talk with Whistleblower & Lawyer, Emma Reilly