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UNAIDS Chief Resigns After Claims of Fostering Abuse Culture

  • Michel Sidibe, the head of the United Nations Aids and HIV (UNAID) agency, will stay on to assist with the transition, UNAIDS said.

    Michel Sidibe, the head of the United Nations Aids and HIV (UNAID) agency, will stay on to assist with the transition, UNAIDS said. | Photo: Reuters

Published 13 December 2018
Opinion

A report denounced the official for fostering “culture of harassment, bullying, and abuse of power.”

Michel Sidibe, the head of the United Nations Aids and HIV (UNAID) agency, is stepping down after a report deemed his “defective leadership” nurtured a hostile work environment among staff, the agency confirmed Thursday.

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“He informed the UNAIDS Board that its meeting in June 2019 would be his last Board meeting and he would complete his duties at the end of June 2019,” said a UNAIDS statement.

Sidibe, whose term was set to end in June, announced his plans to resign after a 70-page report issued Friday denounced the “culture of harassment, including sexual harassment, bullying, and abuse of power” he tolerated while heading the department.

The four-member panel, behind the report, said that a “patriarchal culture of favoritism and cronyism” had allowed “impunity and retaliation.” 

Sidibe, a Malian national, has been executive director since 2009 of the Geneva-based agency which has some 670 staff worldwide.

"The UNAIDS Secretariat is in crisis, a crisis which threatens its vital work painted a troubling picture of the UNAIDS organizational culture that cries out for urgent change,” the panel report said.

Over the weekend, Sweden demanded his resignation, saying they were freezing their funding until his departure adding that in any other major institution, Sidibe would have been “summarily fired.”

Sidibe was quoted as saying in the UNAID statement: “I will work to ensure a smooth transition and pledge to keep my focus on our staff and delivering results for the people we serve.”

The United Nations has tried to increase transparency and strengthen how it deals with serious accusations in recent years after a string of sexual exploitation and abuse charges were made against U.N. peacekeepers in Central African Republic.

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