The new group UN Staff for Gaza, which aims to “speak out against the atrocities perpetrated against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” insists it is a “private association, neither formally affiliated with nor endorsed by the United Nations.”
Still, the group consists of U.N. staff and personnel, and its senior adviser is Maher Nasser, U.N. assistant secretary-general for global communications, who, it says, is taking part “in his private capacity.”
The group also held its first event on Tuesday at the U.N. headquarters in New York City. (JNS sought comment from the office of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.)
Guterres’s office told JNS last year that he “will not tolerate any actions or statements by staff members that violate the organization’s internal rules concerning the use of social media or violate their responsibilities as civil servants.”
