Independent United Nations human-rights experts have urged the Food and Agriculture Organisation to protect staff and keep human-rights principles central to its work, after raising concerns about remarks by its director-general and the non-renewal of a senior official’s contract.
The experts said they were concerned about the treatment of FAO staff engaged in work on the right to food and international humanitarian law in Gaza. Their intervention is a call for action, not a finding by a court or an internal investigation. The account of the employment decision is described as information received by the experts, and the disputed circumstances have not been independently established in the statement.
Concerns over Gaza-related technical work
The statement refers to remarks made by the FAO director-general at a high-level event at the organisation’s Rome headquarters on 29 September. The experts said the remarks appeared to link the departure of senior officials with engagement on human-rights issues.
They also reported that FAO’s senior management did not renew the contract of a division director who had served the United Nations for 26 years. According to the information they received, the stated reason was an alleged breach of impartiality standards while carrying out technical work on starvation and famine in Gaza. The experts’ account does not establish the official’s identity, the full employment record or the FAO’s response to their concerns.
The experts argued that examining conflict-related food insecurity, famine and starvation falls within the food agency’s mandate. They said technical analysis can document the use of starvation as a method of warfare and assess its implications under international humanitarian and human-rights law. In their view, such work is compatible with impartiality rather than evidence of a departure from it.
Requests to the agency and member states
The experts called on the FAO to uphold the principles of the UN Charter and apply the organisation’s Standards of Conduct. They warned that measures perceived as reprisals or intimidation could create fear among staff and damage confidence in the organisation. These are risks identified by the experts, not a determination that retaliation occurred.
They also asked member states to raise the issue in FAO governing bodies and hold the organisation’s leadership accountable to its stated values. The experts said they had written directly to the director-general to convey their concerns. Their statement did not report a reply or describe any formal process underway.
The call extends beyond the immediate employment dispute. The experts urged UN entities to reaffirm that respect for human rights, including the rights to life and food, and human dignity is part of their institutional mandate. They said those principles should be explicit in the selection of the next FAO director-general, scheduled for 2027.
UN Human Rights Council Special Procedures experts serve independently and in their individual capacities. They are not UN staff, and their opinions do not necessarily represent the position of the UN or its human-rights office. The FAO Council’s current agenda separately includes Gaza-related food security matters under the organisation’s mandate; that agenda does not constitute a response to the experts’ intervention.
