A new letter circulating among World Food Program employees is questioning the ethics of Cindy McCain, the program’s executive director, after she attended a forum honoring the people of Israel recently.
The letter reflects the intensifying controversies hitting the United Nations over the Israel Defense Forces’ disproportionate bombardment of the Palestinian enclave of Gaza in response to Hamas’s massacre of Oct. 7. The controversies include the IDF’s assaults on UN facilities sheltering civilians in the war.
As of Nov. 24, 108 staffers, all Palestinians, working for the UN’s Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa) have been killed in the war. Their deaths were marked in a global UN ceremony on Nov. 13. Since Nov. 11, after services and communications at hospitals in Gaza’s north collapsed, the enclave’s Ministry of Health has not updated casualty figures. Its reported fatality toll as of Nov. 10 was 11,078, of whom 4,506 were said to be children and 3,027 women. About 2,700 others, including some 1,500 children, have been reported missing and may be trapped or dead under the rubble.
McCain, a high-profile American, is the widow of United States Senator John McCain, a Republican of Arizona who was also a presidential candidate and died in 2018. She sat front row at the Halifax International Security Forum, which was attended by diplomats, US officials and military last weekend. At the Nova Scotia gathering, the annual prize for Leadership in Public Service, named after John McCain, was presented to the “People of Israel.”
On the “75th anniversary of Israel’s creation, and in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack that resulted in the greatest loss of life to the Jewish people since the Holocaust, it is fitting to present an award that bears Senator McCain’s name,” the award read.
[Update, Nov. 30: PassBlue received an anonymous email reading as follows: “In solidarity with the Palestine country office: We, the WFP staff from the Palestine Country Office, the Syria Country Office, the Jordan Country Office, the Egypt Country Office, and the Regional Bureau, unequivocally refuse to attend the meeting with the Executive Director as we question the neutrality of WFP leadership in addressing the humanitarian needs in the country. We are also extremely concerned about our own security and safety in the field due to the ED’s recent external and internal engagements. The incidents below were perceived by the staff and the media in the region as WFP siding with one party in the current war in Gaza.” Among other “incidents” cited: McCain has not showed “support for the field staff,” including not visiting Gaza, such as the head of Unrwa (Philippe Lazzarini) and Unicef’s Catherine Russell have. “Consequently, we find it necessary to withhold a meeting with the ED until she publicly declares her impartial position from the conflict, her respect to the WFP code of conduct, condemn the killing of our colleagues from the UN staff in Gaza, and condemn the weaponization of hunger, using the same challenges where she conveyed her partial position.” The full email.]
[Update, Nov. 24: McCain didn’t attend the UN’s global minute of silence memorial on Nov. 13 to honor the 100-plus killed staff members in Gaza. According to a source who attended the memorial held in parallel at the WFP’s headquarters in Rome that day, McCain sent her deputy to attend despite her being in Rome. The source also said that the WFP flag didn’t appear to be lowered half-staff despite staff requests. The frustration over McCain’s absence and how the memorial was handled led many staff members to walk out in protest. According to reporting by Devex, an anonymous letter demanding McCain’s immediate resignation for “her response, or lack thereof, to the crisis in Gaza” is making rounds among the WFP staff, but Devex says that it’s unclear whether the letter was signed or even sent. PassBlue has confirmed the existence of the letter circulating among the staff, but the scope of staff’s support for it is unclear. The agency didn’t respond to numerous requests by PassBlue for a comment.]
Cindy McCain was nominated by the US government to run the Rome-based World Food Program earlier this year and took office in April. It is the world’s largest humanitarian organization, and the US is the top donor. McCain regularly travels in her new role to the world’s toughest places, as did her immediate predecessor, David Beasley, a former governor of South Carolina.
The John McCain award is usually given to “individuals from any country who have demonstrated uncommon leadership in the pursuit of human justice,” according to the Halifax forum.
“Her attendance showed quite a degree of tone-deafness,” said Mukesh Kapila, a former UN official in Sudan, who writes about global health and humanitarian aid, commenting on McCain’s attendance for PassBlue. “It’s an ethical breach of the duty of neutrality. The World Food Program has a responsibility to help people of all sides.”
The internal email circulating among the World Food Program’s staff regarding their boss’s role at the event, seen by PassBlue, says that many personnel “have concerns around the ethics and neutrality of such representation.”
The letter reveals the internal dissent among staff and others connected to the UN going public over the unending devastation of the war on civilians. Affiliated humanitarian institutions are also voicing major concerns over the UN’s perceived inability to demand a ceasefire as Israel says its invasion in Gaza aims to annihilate Hamas.
Unicef staff, for instance, sent their boss, Catherine Russell, a petition, signed by more than 3,800 people, calling for a ceasefire and to investigate Israeli attacks on children, according to Devex. Russell is also an American, having been nominated to the post by the Biden administration. World Food Program staff have also called on McCain to demand a ceasefire.
President Joe Biden has declined to make such a demand, at least publicly. Instead, his administration has been calling for humanitarian “pauses,” to little effect.
Last week, UN independent human rights experts released a statement clamoring for relevant parties to prevent “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza. The statement, released by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, pointed to “evidence of increasing genocidal incitement.” The proof included an “overt intent” to “destroy the Palestinian people under occupation.”
Last month, in a much-publicized act, a UN human rights official based in New York City said he was stepping down to protest the organization’s inability to stop the “genocide” of Palestinians. His retirement coincided with this step, the UN spokesperson pointed out.
The World Food Program email offers a template that employees can use to send to the agency’s ethics office, requesting clarification on whether McCain’s attendance at the Halifax forum was “appropriate and in line with her role and responsibilities, as well as with WFP guidelines and policies.”
The template offers suggested language for an email to the ethics office: “The Executive Director’s attendance and active participation in this event could compromise WFP’s perceived neutrality by being seen as siding with one party to a conflict.”
Elsewhere is the phrase: “I am extremely concerned that such perception may also lead to increased risk to our personnel, especially in countries in the Middle East.”
The agency couldn’t be reached for a comment by PassBlue’s publishing deadline.
An interagency network of humanitarian leaders also called for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza in early November as well as the “immediate and unconditional release of all civilians held hostage.” Among the UN officials who signed the document were McCain and Russell.
In a trip to Egypt in early November, McCain pleaded in a statement that the Rafah border crossing into Gaza be opened more consistently for lifesaving aid to get in.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has described Gaza currently as a “never-ending humanitarian nightmare.” In a statement on Sunday, he called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire again, after two Unrwa schools in Gaza were struck by the IDF in less than 24 hours, killing dozens of people, including women and children and breaching international humanitarian law.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are also urging Guterres to include Israel in his annual blacklist of countries and terrorist organizations known for killing or injuring children.
Anastasiia Carrier is a Detroit-based freelance reporter. She earned an M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and her work has appeared in Politico Magazine, The Wire China and The Radcliffe Magazine.
Cindy has demonstrated that like her [deceased] husband John, she is a war lover with no respect of international laws. She supports the terrorist state of Israel and has no respect for UN Charter, rules and regulations. She has no respect for her boss the UN Secretary General’s principled positions. These are facts, she has to be fired!