Intimidation at the UN
Intimidation at the UN
“After the session was done, I was standing where the speakers from NGOs usually sit. A person from my country’s permanent mission came up to me and told me that the Ambassador would like to meet me. I said, ‘Yes, of course.’ I took the stairs down to the main floor to see the Ambassador, and she went up to the Ambassador. A couple of women from the country’s official delegation stood nearby. I could hear them say in my language, ‘Who is this person? Do we know her? Where is she from?’ And then they surrounded me on the main floor.
“The main person from the country delegation is a right-winger, quite conservative and malicious, and is still involved in politics. She came up close to my face and asked me who I was. I asked if she knew, and she said yes, even though she could not see my name, as my card was flipped. She accused me of lying and causing an international incident. ‘What was I thinking?’, she asked. ‘Who gave me the right to speak?’ She said everything I said was a lie. I said maybe in the part where we talked about LGBTQI people we could have used a different word than ‘persecute,’ that we could’ve made that part a little softer. But the fact is that queer people do not have the same rights. There is this huge, new political, conservative push to silence us and take away our rights.
She came up close to my face and asked me who I was. …She accused me of lying and causing an international incident. ‘What was I thinking?’, she asked. ‘Who gave me the right to speak?’
Diana, sexual and reproductive health and rights activist
Credit: Pavel Danilyuk
Continued Harassment
Continued Harassment
“Somehow I managed to get away from them. We were standing on the main floor the whole time. I told them that I had another meeting coming so I needed to leave the UN. I did not get the chance to meet the Ambassador. Somebody I knew from the Women’s Major Group [which is responsible for facilitating women’s civil society active participation, information sharing, and input into the policy space provided by the United Nations] appeared, so we went together outside. We stood for a while in the hallway and I explained what happened. The person was a bit shaken by my story because, who communicates like that? Then we departed. I left the UN. Then the same person from the delegation came up to me again, stood right in front of me, and started asking me if I knew who she was, that she had studied abroad, and then everything again: How could I say everything that I said? Am I not ashamed of myself? And so on. So I just said, ‘Yeah, okay, I just really need to go now.’ I went back to my hotel. The next day, fortunately, I did not meet them again. But from that moment on I did not feel secure in the UN by myself. It was scary.”
Credit: Mikael Blomkvist
There is this huge, new political, conservative push to silence us and take away our rights.
Diana, sexual and reproductive health and rights activist
Credit: Life Matters