When asked recently about serious allegations that Yahav Lichner, a high-level United Nations staff member working for Unicef, had leaked sensitive, confidential information years ago to Israeli diplomats, the UN and relevant agencies avoided naming him in their public stated responses.

On Aug. 7, Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for Secretary-General António Guterres, referred to Lichner — who has been the director of Unicef’s Washington office since 2025 — only as an “employee” when responding to questions about a Drop Site News investigation. It accuses Lichner, an Israeli from Haifa, of divulging internal UN information — including UN documents marked “strictly confidential” — to Israeli officials.

“For your eyes only. Do not forward,” Lichner wrote on Feb. 20, 2015, to Ron Prosor, Israel’s envoy to the UN at the time, and Ronny Leshno-Yaar, another Israeli diplomat, in an email sent from Lichner’s personal account, according to DropSite.

Lichner was leaking a UN report that he described as a “classified internal summary” of upcoming meetings in Washington involving Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, then the UN high commissioner for human rights.

Yet the UN so far is not uttering Lichner’s name. In response to the allegations about his spying, Unicef — where Lichner has been put on administrative leave since the DropSite article was published on Aug. 4 — and UNFPA, where he worked at the time of the apparent misconduct, referred to him, in separate emails to PassBlue, as an “employee” and an “individual” rather than naming him directly.

“UNICEF is aware of serious allegations concerning an employee and is taking the appropriate action,” Kurtis Cooper, the head of media for Unicef, wrote to PassBlue on Aug. 6, replying to questions about Lichner.

“If true, such actions would be inconsistent with staff obligations under the UN Charter, the staff regulations, and the standards of conduct for the international civil service, all of which emphasize that the responsibilities of staff are international, not national, and which call for the independence and impartiality of the staff of the UN.”

It is unclear whether Lichner has continued leaking information during his work for Unicef, including from his post in D.C. It is also unclear whether a vacancy announcement for that job was advertised publicly or internally by Unicef when it was open or if another competitive process was carried out to select the director. He appears to have started a secondment to Unicef in 2018.

Cooper did not answer details about the process behind Lichner’s hiring for Washington, raising questions about issues of transparency and fairness in the agency’s recruitment procedures.

The Unicef job in Washington involves meeting with US government officials as well as foreign dignitaries to advocate and fund-raise for the agency, which is tasked with protecting the rights of children worldwide. It is generally led by an American; the current executive director is Catherine Russell, a Biden appointee.

‘Rather strange’

Thomas Weiss, a longtime political science scholar and expert on the UN, described the UN’s overall decision not to name Lichner amid the accusations as “rather strange,” given that his identity is now widely known since the news broke last week.

“The idea that this is an unnamed official seems a little silly to me,” Weiss told PassBlue in a brief phone call on Aug. 8, adding that he did not understand the tactic and that it did not strike him as “very sensible.”

Lichner 46, is accused of supplying Israeli diplomats based in New York City as well as in Jerusalem with confidential UN documents, internal deliberations and advance information while he worked for the UN Population Fund, or UNFPA, in 2014 and 2015. He joined the agency on May 5, 2014, and fully left on Jan. 1, 2022, but had been working for Unicef from 2018. (The agency, based in New York City, focuses on sexual reproductive health for women.) The DropSite investigation was based on hacked emails belonging to Prosor, the Israeli envoy.

UNFPA’s statement sent to PassBlue on Aug. 7 regarding Lichner is more hesitant but longer than Unicef’s, saying, “UNFPA takes any allegations of breaches of confidentiality, or of violations of the obligations of international civil servants under the UN Charter, very seriously.

Should such allegations be substantiated, the conduct in question may be inconsistent with the obligations of staff under the UN Charter, the UN Staff Regulations and Rules, and the Standards of Conduct for the International Civil Service. These frameworks underscore that the responsibilities of international civil servants are exclusively international in character and require a commitment to independence, impartiality and integrity.

The individual referenced in the article has not worked with UNFPA for several years. UNFPA remains committed to ensuring that its personnel understand and uphold their obligations under the UN Charter and applicable staff regulations and rules.”

Richard Gowan, the global issues and institutions program director at the International Crisis Group think tank, said: “In cases where the name of a UN official under suspicion is not public knowledge and/or the credibility of accusations is unproven, it could be prejudicial to release the official’s name.”

He added: “Although in this case Lichner’s name is already in the public domain, there has not been a team for any proper investigation, so I assume that the UN is just following its usual protocols.”

Public bio deleted

The email leaks to Prosor by Lichner, whose LinkedIn page and X account were deleted last week, included material described by him not only as confidential or “strictly confidential,” but also unpublished correspondence involving then-Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and accounts of private meetings by senior UN officials. In several exchanges, Lichner cautioned his Israeli recipients that the material was “sensitive” or “not intended for further distribution.”

That includes information in July 2014, when Lichner leaked to Prosor and other Israel officials, one day after Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, a letter that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had sent to Ban and an unpublished draft of the UN chief’s reply.

Before his LinkedIn page was erased last week, Lichner described himself as an “international affairs and government relations expert with 20+ years of diverse experience at the intersection between the UN, Governments and other stakeholders at the global and national levels. Focused on policy formulation and designing strategies to build and grow trusted partnerships to advance corporate priorities.”

He also said he was a corporate lawyer “by training” and has “lived, loved and worked in Tel Aviv, London and New York.” In addition, he has been an adviser to the Israeli mission to the UN and served in the Israel Defense Forces from 2000 to 2006.

At UNFPA, one colleague described Lichner as a well-connected “political operator” who floated in and out of the New York City office and went to London as well.

When Lichner moved to Unicef years later, he was also working in London when he joined the team of Sigrid Kaag, a former Dutch politician, when she was appointed by Guterres in December 2023 as the senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, a new role to push Israelis to let in more lifesaving aid into the besieged Palestinian enclave.

Lichner’s secondment lasted approximately from January 2024 until September 2024, and he worked within Kaag’s team from Jerusalem and New York City. The Gaza mission ended on March 31, 2025. Kaag is no longer affiliated with the UN.

On the occasions when she updated the UN Security Council in person about her Gaza role, Lichner was generally with her and other members of her team.

Breaching UN rules?

As to the UN’s current course regarding Lichner, there is no public confirmation that the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), the UN’s internal watchdog, has opened an investigation into the allegations against him. PassBlue asked Haq, the deputy spokesperson, on Aug. 7, about such a probe, but he did not provide information.

Moreover, when asked if Lichner will be paid, partly paid or receive no pay while he is on administrative leave, Haq said, “I don’t have further details on the status of the person involved. I believe Unicef will be in the lead on this and they can answer any further questions.”

But Cooper at Unicef had told PassBlue: “UNICEF does not publicly discuss details of individual personnel, performance, or recruitment.”

When asked about the role Guterres played in Unicef’s decision to put Lichner on leave, Haq said: “What I can tell you is that we in the Secretariat are aware of these charges and will be involved in any sort of coordination and information sharing that is needed.”

The rules governing UN staff explicitly restrict them from passing information obtained through their positions to governments — including their own countries — or other outside parties.

UN Staff Rule 1.2 states that staff members shall not communicate to a government, entity or person information known to them because of their official position, unless authorized to do so. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also issued a bulletin on Feb. 12, 2007, governing the classification and handling of sensitive UN information, including material classified as “confidential” and “strictly confidential.”

The bulletin also establishes rules for protecting and handling sensitive information within the Secretariat, including information whose unauthorized disclosure could damage UN operations, member states or individuals.

“The work of the United Nations should be open and transparent, except insofar as the nature of information concerned is deemed confidential,” the bulletin states on information sensitivity, classification and handling.

Additionally, Article 100 of the UN Charter requires staff to refrain from conduct inconsistent with their status as international officials responsible only to the organization.

The emails Lichner slipped to Prosor and other Israeli diplomats, as documented by Drop Site, end in 2015. Prosor was Israel’s UN ambassador from 2011 to 2015. He is now his country’s envoy to Germany.

This article was updated to correct the year Lichner started working at Unicef; it was 2018, not 2022.