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."
