Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,
Thank you for taking the time to attend this second quarterly Member State Briefing for 2023 on the prevention of, and response to, sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment.
With the support and guidance of you, our Member States, WHO has embarked on a journey to prevent and respond to all forms of sexual misconduct – both from within this organization, and with our implementing partners.
Today, I will briefly update you on the highlights of the progress we have made in the past quarter against the four results of our three-year strategy and summarize the concrete accountability actions we have taken.
In result one, shifting to a victim and survivor-centred approach, I’d like to highlight four achievements.
Firstly, we provided holistic and comprehensive support to 115 survivors in DRC related to the 10th Ebola outbreak, through UNFPA and other partners, based on United Nations standards.
As you know, 23 of the 115 are related to WHO, and the rest are related to other agencies, but we have to take care of everybody the same way, that's why we are taking care of all the victims.
We are now entering the second phase to review our support and to provide more targeted support for those who need it. Again, we will cover all 115, based on the needs they have.
We have proposals from more than 50 local NGOs to work with us on this and will work with UN and NGO partners to decide how best to proceed in supporting those who will need additional support.
In the meantime, anyone who needs help is provided support through UNG and NGO partners and the Field Victims’ Rights Advocate in DRC.
Secondly, for improving support to victims and survivors, I have established the post of victim and survivor support officer to coordinate across WHO and with UN partners for timely support to survivors.
Thirdly, we have endorsed the UN-wide Victims Rights Statement and are integrating it into our own system.
And finally for this result, together with the UN Victims Rights Advocate Jane Connors, we are developing training sessions for our investigations team and our country focal points to apply a victim and survivor-centred approach.
We will also share these with our UN and humanitarian partners.
For result two, or the second pillar, we have significantly strengthened our policies and procedures.
In March, we shared with you the new policy on preventing and addressing sexual misconduct.
Our policy on Preventing and Addressing Abusive Conduct was updated in June 2023.
And last week, we launched a new policy on preventing and addressing retaliation and a revised code of ethics.
These, together with our staff rules and regulations, provide a modern, clear and strong foundation for our PRS work.
But policies need another level of clarification.
At the World Health Assembly in May, Member States urged the Secretariat to finalize the PRS accountability framework, which details individual accountabilities across seven categories of staff - starting from all personnel to myself as Director-General.
This is near finalization and will be the final piece that we need to fully implement our strategy.
Result three, or pillar three, is focused on safeguarding our operations.
We made progress to address one of the biggest remaining risks in our operations – the risk of sexual misconduct by our implementing partners.
We are doing this together with UN sister agencies.
All our Country Offices are required to complete an annual sexual misconduct risk assessment exercise and develop targeted risk mitigation plans.
We are taking measures to safeguard from sexual misconduct in grade 2 and grade 3 health emergency responses, but of course much more needs to be done.
To safeguard our work in countries, we continue to expand our country PRS focal point network, with one in three of nearly 400 focal points in our high-risk or priority countries.
We now have senior P5 level PRS coordinators in five regional offices.
The fourth result, culture change, we are working with the external experts we hired to conduct the culture review and to analyse and make sense of the findings of the organization-wide survey and one-on-one interviews.
We have continued to engage and listen to our workforce to understand the challenges and enablers of the culture change that will support zero tolerance for sexual misconduct.
Here's what we've accomplished so far:
More than 7000 personnel have so far participated in three webinars which explain our reforms.
An average of 700 personnel a month come to Open Door sessions, where they can ask questions of directors and senior officials from our PRS, Human Resources, legal and investigations teams.
Our PRS learning courses on OpenWHO.org platform currently record 40 220 enrolments, including implementing partners, UN, ministries of health and NGOs.
And the newly launched training on the new PASM policy and the three-year strategy has recorded nearly 4000 enrolments so far.
In this first year, we have made a solid start. Today, at the half year mark, 10% of the 78 of the targets set for this year are completed, 62% are in progress and only 6% remain uninitiated.
While we continue the organization-wide work, we are making sure individual accountability is enforced.
In the first six months of this year, we received 48 allegations of sexual misconduct. Six were substantiated and are being processed.
Since the last quarter of 2022, WHO has dismissed seven personnel for misconduct and blacklisted them from being hired in the UN system.
The UN OIOS, which is conducting investigations into the allegations of SEA in the 10th Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has issued three full investigation reports to WHO and these are being processed according to our set procedure.
WHO provided information in respect of 16 alleged perpetrators linked to WHO at the time to DRC national authorities and we are collaborating with the local tribunal in Goma, which is overseeing the cases of 13 survivors who are proceeding with legal action using legal aid support provided by WHO.
These are some highlights that I wanted to share with you.
To take the next steps in our journey we need to be honest about the challenges we face.
For the rest of the year addressing these challenges will require more operational focus, more partner focus and more tools and guidance.
We continue to invite external scrutiny and are currently undergoing a MOPAN review including for PRSEAH.
I have also agreed to the two co-commissioners of the Independent Commission’s proposal to have an independent review of the progress WHO has made in response to their report issued in September 2021.
Next you will hear the preliminary finding of that review from Mr Gogo.
So with that, I hand back to Gaya. I look forward to your comments, questions and advice, as always.