Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for the United Nations Secretary-General, said on Friday that, contrary to previous reports in The Jerusalem Post and the Financial Times, the Secretary-General did not say that UN special rapporteurs are "out of control"; he said that they are independent actors outside the Secretariat's control.
The Spokesperson was responding to a report in The Jerusalem Post, which claimed that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres admitted in an interview with the Financial Times on Tuesday that several UN special rapporteurs are "totally out of control" regarding their views on Israel.
Guterres was referring to the process of the work Special Rapporteurs do, not the content or the output of that work, Dujarric claimed.
"I think it's a misreading of what the Secretary-General said," explained Dujarric. "What he said in the interview, and I think people should look at the video, is that he can't speak for the entirety of the UN system. Many in the UN structure are independent of the Secretariat and therefore totally out of the Secretariat's control… out of the Secretary-General’s control."
In response to a follow-up question about the potentially controversial nature of some rapporteurs' reports, Dujarric affirmed that the UN Secretary-General's office "defend[s] their right to speak."
"We defend their right to work," he continued. "We will always do so. But, given their independence, it is not for the Secretary-General to say, 'we like what this rapporteur says, we don't like what this rapporteur says,' right? They're independent. Their strength is in their independence."
Guterres denies claims that the UN has a bias against Israel
In his interview with the Financial Times, Guterres also strongly denied that the UN as a whole has an institutional bias against Israel.
"I totally refuse the idea of bias," he said. "On the contrary, I think we have been on the right side of history."
He added that, from his perspective, the UN had been "defending what is necessary for peace to come to the Middle East.
"There are two peoples, with a few million each one," he explained, "And there is no way one can destroy the other. So it's probably better to do everything possible to reconcile."
Tzvi Jasper contributed to this report.