A pair of United Nations workers have been suspended without pay in the wake of a sex-act video filmed in Tel Aviv, Israel that went viral last month.
The penalization was appropriate “given the seriousness of the allegations of failing to observe the standards of conduct expected of international civil servants,” Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN’s secretary general António Guterres, told BBC News Thursday.
The alleged sexual misconduct involved two men, UN military observers in Israel who worked for the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), who were featured in an 18-second video that showed a woman straddling a man in the back of a UN-marked car.
After the video erupted on social media, the UN opened an investigation into it, and the staffers will remain suspended without pay until the investigation wraps.
Dujarric said the video left him “shocked and deeply disturbed” and noted that “UNTSO has re-engaged in a robust awareness-raising campaign to remind its personnel of their obligations to the UN Code of Conduct.”
Guterres vowed to have “zero-tolerance” for sexual misconduct in the UN.
The body’s strict policies against staffers committing such misconduct enable it to repatriate or ban offenders from the organization’s peacekeeping operations. The offender’s home nation would be the one to take additional legal or disciplinary action.
Last year alone, UN staff members faced 175 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse, of which 16 were substantiated and 15 were unsubstantiated. The rest remained under investigation.
