A Supreme Mess

A Supreme Mess
One U.N. staffer petitions our high Court.

By Claudia Rosett

Even the United Nations’ own employees don’t trust it to deliver justice. Just ask Cynthia Brzak, an American who has worked for the past 26 years at the U.N. refugee office in Geneva, Switzerland. Despairing of a U.N. system that operates immune to any normal jurisdiction of law, Brzak, who two years ago brought an in-house allegation of sexual harassment, is now going outside the institution to ask for a hearing at the U.S. Supreme Court.

“You have to be able to go somewhere and ask for justice,” said Brzak, reached yesterday at her Geneva phone number, “I’ve tried as hard as I could within the system.”

Enroute to this unusual step, Brzak’s case has evolved from an initial allegation of an unwanted grope by a former boss, then the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, to a far broader condemnation of systemic problems bedeviling the entire U.N. The motion and complaint sent by her lawyer this week to the Supreme Court seeks to challenge the diplomatic immunity of the U.N. itself, and alleges that in the U.N.’s handling of her case, a number of U.N. officials, including Lubbers and Secretary-General Kofi Annan, “engaged in a pattern of racketeering.” Queried yesterday for any comment, Annan’s office did not respond. Lubbers, who resigned from the U.N. last year, could not be reached.

It’s a long shot that the Supreme Court will do anything but dismiss this case out of hand, and perhaps that’s just as well. The legal argument raises questions about U.S. policy in dealing with the U.N., an arena in which quite possibly the only course worse than entrusting our fate to the diplomats would be to turn it over to the lawyers

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Anyone else see the supreme irony in an employee of the UN seeking justice from the US Supreme Court? Yes I knew you did!