Catherine Russell, executive director of UNICEF, visited Gaza this week in a show of solidarity with the agency’s staff, who have endured weeks of Israeli bombardment and the death of family members. She got a rough reception.
Local staff faulted the agency’s leadership, during a tense private meeting, for mounting what they see as a tepid public response to an unprecedented military assault on Gaza’s youth, and for failing to call out Israel for killing more than 11,000 Palestinians, including more than 4,500 children, in Gaza, according to figures compiled by the Hamas-run Health Ministry. Devex was not able to independently verify the figures.
“What’s happening in Gaza is a war-crime, and a shameful stain on the forehead of humanity, the United Nations, and most of all UNICEF who claims to defend the child rights,” according to a copy of the talking points a staff member read to Russell. “This is textbook genocide and ethnic cleansing crime of an entire nation.”
“Since we heard about your visit, the staff contemplated whether to meet you or not, a lot of us are refusing to meet you due to UNICEF’s weak position in the face of what can be called a deliberate and systematic attack on the Palestinian children,” the staffer added, according to the talking points. The children’s agency staff planned to boycott a separate meeting in East Jerusalem, according to a UNICEF staffer, but Russell postponed the visit and cut short her travel in the region after being injured in a car crash en route to Gaza.
Russell, one of only two U.N. agency chiefs to visit Gaza during the crisis, responded to her staff that “these are very tough comments but she understands the frustration, [and] we are doing our best to help children,” according to a UNICEF official briefed on the exchange. But she added that imposing a humanitarian cease-fire is “beyond her capacity.”
The raw exchange reflects the deepening anger toward Israel within the U.N. system as Israeli forces prosecute a military campaign that has already resulted in the deaths of more than 100 U.N. staffers, the largest number of deaths in a conflict since the global agency’s founding.
As of Nov. 10, when the Health Ministry stopped updating the death toll, an additional 2,700 people, including some 1,500 children, remain missing and presumed to be trapped or dead under the rubble, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. More than 1,200 Israelis, including 33 children, have been killed since Hamas carried out the slaughter of Israeli civilians and soldiers in southern Israel, according to Israeli authorities. Some 238 Israelis and foreign nationals, including 30 children, are held hostage by Hamas.
The staff meeting with Russell also underscored the degree to which the U.N.’s rank and file, in Gaza and beyond, demand that humanitarian leadership set aside their tradition of silent neutrality and wade into a complex political struggle with clear statements on who is responsible for the rising death toll in Gaza.
It has also reinforced lingering suspicions among many staff that senior U.S. heads of U.N. humanitarian agencies, like Russell and World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain, are too close to the White House that nominated them for the jobs and the Western donors who sustain their agencies’ work.
Both have deep personal and professional links to a U.S. national security community that has helped maintain Israel’s military superiority in the region for decades, as well as advocating for a Palestinian state.
McCain, of course, is the widow of the late Senator John McCain, a fervent supporter of Israel. Russell, a former White House adviser in the Biden administration, is married to former President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Thomas Donilon, and her brother-in-law, Mike Dolin, is an adviser to President Joe Biden, who nominated them both.
The roiling U.N. dispute comes amid growing institutional dissent among staff from numerous humanitarian and development institutions, including USAID, over perceived bias in favor of Israel.
While U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has sharply criticized Israel’s conduct in the war — prompting a call for his resignation from Israel’s U.N. ambassador — and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk has accused Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes, other current and former U.N. staffers protest that the U.N. has not gone far enough. A group of prominent former officials, including former UNICEF chiefs Carol Bellamy and Anthony Lake and the heads of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, recently urged the U.N. to place Israel on a blacklist of countries and terrorist organizations that kill or maim children.
The call for action extends beyond UNICEF’s staff in Gaza.
Thousands of current and former staff with UNICEF and WFP are pressing their leadership to take a tougher public stand on ending the Israeli offensive in Gaza, claiming that flagrant violations of international law are inflicting “a disproportionate impact of epic proportions on Palestinian children.”
At UNICEF, staff delivered their appeal in a petition, seen by Devex, to Russell and her four deputy directors. It was signed by more than 3,800 people, largely current and former UNICEF staff, and called for an immediate cease-fire, an investigation into Israeli attacks on children, and evidence of alleged Israeli crimes to be considered for the U.N.s’ blacklist of countries that kill and abuse children.
“We call on UNICEF to condemn the collective punishment of Gazans and Palestinian people,” the petition states. “We cannot be bystanders as this catastrophic crisis takes place.”
“This violence is having catastrophic implications on children and families, within Palestine and beyond,” the petition states. “We urgently call on UNICEF leaders to most immediately strengthen advocacy for an immediate cease fire in the Gaza Strip and an end to the ongoing violence in Palestine.”
UNICEF staff have faulted Russell for what they see as a failure to firmly and consistently advocate for a cease-fire, noting that she has often softened her comments in favor of a far more limited humanitarian pause or humanitarian cease-fire, which reserves Israel’s right to continue prosecuting its military campaign against Hamas.
The Gazan staff told Russell they want to see UNICEF take “stronger positions” calling for an immediate cease-fire, advocating for Palestinian children imprisoned in Israel, and highlighting the impact of Israeli occupation on Gaza.
“We are expecting from the head of UNICEF who has been nominated by the Biden administration … to put an immediate and public pressure to end the massacre,” the Gaza staff said. “A stronger position would have been to stay in Gaza and call all the head-of-agencies to join you in a visit to break the siege on Gaza.”
“Palestine and Gaza is a testimony of the hypocrisy of this world and its double standards, as we saw much stronger and clear stances during the Russian-Ukrainian war from UNICEF and the entire world,” the staff added. “But apparently our children don’t matter as much to the world.”
A spokesperson for UNICEF, Christopher de Bono, declined to comment on the exchange between Russell and her agency’s staff in Gaza, but noted that “UNICEF colleagues in the region are working tirelessly to try to make a difference for children in Palestine and elsewhere.”
“We are immensely grateful for their dedication and determination,” de Bono told Devex in an emailed response to questions. “Our staff are, thankfully, very passionate about children’s rights and our mandate. And like everyone who cares about children, they are frustrated about what’s happening and what is not, a feeling shared by the whole of UNICEF, from the Executive Director down. And we understand that sometimes their workloads and their passion make it hard for some of our colleagues to keep up with what our organization and its leaders have done and are doing.”
De Bono said that Russell and the institution have been “steadfast and loud, in public and in intergovernmental and private meetings, about the terrible situation of children caught in the crisis, and the critical need for a cease fire.”
“We have not shied away from honest accounts of the horrors we are seeing and learning about, and our fears for the children who are suffering.”
“We have an important humanitarian power, presence and role that requires us to engage with all parties, here as elsewhere in the world, to seek for children the lifesaving help they desperately need,” de Bono said. “As UNICEF, we don’t take sides — we only side with children.”
“Other entities within the UN system play different roles, and many of the things our staff and the world are calling for, like prosecuting violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, are things that must be done, but that other parts of the UN system will lead on,” he added. “As always, we will contribute what we can to their work.”
The petition makes no reference to Hamas’ slaughter of Israeli civilians, including children and soldiers, on Oct. 7, or its practice of launching tens of thousands of rockets against Israeli civilian targets from heavily populated neighborhoods in Gaza. Hamas’ leaders have made it clear that the mass murder of Israelis — a “great act” — was intended to trigger the kind of overwhelming military carnage being witnessed in Gaza as part of a strategy to refocus international attention on the plight of Gaza.
Hamas hopes the killings will “change the entire equation” and instigate a “permanent” war against Israel.
A UNICEF staffer explained that the petition’s authors felt that citing the Oct. 7 violence would serve Israel’s political argument that the latest round of violence began with Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israeli civilians, but is the result of decades of military occupation.
“Over decades, the Palestinian people have faced many grievances and challenges, from dispossession, suffocating occupation and the most restrictive blockade with draconian restrictions on the importation of food, electricity, water and basic essential services and supplies,” the petition states. “We call on UNICEF to ensure that our internal and external messaging reflects this reality.”
In contrast, senior U.N. officials have sought to strike a balance, routinely highlighting Hamas’ action as the spark that triggered Israel’s overwhelming military assault on Gaza. On Thursday, UNICEF’s deputy executive director for Humanitarian Action and Supply Operations, Ted Chaiban, who joined Russell in her visit to a Gazan hospital in Khan Younis, met with the families of Israeli children taken hostage by Hamas and pledged “UNICEF will continue to do everything in our power to bring these children home where they belong.”
UNICEF’s leadership has pushed back on the calls for assigning blame for the violence, arguing that it will only undercut their ability to carry out their humanitarian work.
“We can condemn individual parties, but what will that do to create access for children to allow us to do the work that we need to do?” Kitty van der Heijden, UNICEF’s deputy director for partnership, told staff at an Oct. 26 town hall meeting. “We have been impartial and neutral for a reason. We’re impartial, neutral, because that enables us to deliver in incredibly difficult circumstances.”
Russell added that the relief agency needs to steer clear of weighing in on political matters, according to a video recording of the town hall meeting viewed by Devex.
“There are many people at the U.N. and in other places whose job is to do politics,” Russell said. “That is not our job.” Russell said she understands that staff have “very strong feelings” about the situation in Gaza and that it is “all fair” to air them with her. “People have experiences in life, they have points of view, that’s fine.”
“It is not okay, in my view, to challenge people’s motives about what they’re doing. You can disagree with how things are done. …. That is totally fair. It is not okay to say that people are not acting in good faith and not acting in the best interest of children. I don’t accept that. I don’t believe it. I have not seen that.”
WFP staffers have also issued their own appeal to the agency’s director, McCain, to “strengthen advocacy for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and to leverage WFP’s influence to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war.”
“We emphasize our strong belief that a clear call for a humanitarian ceasefire in the current context will reinforce rather than undermine WFP’s neutrality in this conflict,” the Oct. 28 petition, seen by Devex, stated. “As humanitarians we have a duty to call for the protection of civilians and to advocate for upholding the principles of International Humanitarian Law on which we rely for our access to affected populations and which continue to come under attack, thereby also risking the security of our staff and of humanitarian workers around the world.”
The petition voiced strong support for WFP’s participation along with other U.N. humanitarian agencies, including the World Health Organization and UNICEF, in a joint statement calling for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire.
“However, we noticed in the days following this statement, WFP public statements, social media posts, and official interviews have failed to carry forward this call. Further, WFP has not released any advocacy materials on the illegality of the use of hunger as a weapon of war, an issue directly linked to WFP’s core mandate.”
Since then, McCain on Nov. 5 signed on to a joint statement by U.N. and private humanitarian agency heads calling for a cease-fire. But she has never issued a personal call for a cease-fire or a humanitarian cease-fire. She has largely focused her advocacy on the urgent need to expand access to humanitarian assistance for Gaza, recently paying a visit to the Egyptian side of the Rafah border with Gaza.
A spokesperson for the Rome-based food agency told Devex by email that “WFP’s senior leadership has been clear and steadfast that operational aid organizations must have sustained and unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza — and that safety for humanitarian workers and civilians is essential.”
“WFP is deeply concerned by the horrific events in the region and the immense suffering of innocent civilians is devastating. WFP has done — and will continue to do — everything we can to support our colleagues in Gaza, and ensure that we can reach and deliver life-saving humanitarian aid to the people of Palestine,” the spokesperson added.
“In line with WFP’s mandate, we are acutely focused on delivering life-saving food aid to the millions in Gaza in desperate need.”
Colum Lynch is an award-winning reporter and Senior Global Reporter for Devex. He covers the intersection of development, diplomacy, and humanitarian relief at the United Nations and beyond. Prior to Devex, Colum reported on foreign policy and national security for Foreign Policy Magazine and the Washington Post.
