Whistleblower claims UN working with China as she faces losing her protection

As United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres seems all but set to win a second term in office it seems that his muchvaunted whistleblower protection program is not all it seems to be. At least according to one whistleblower who says the U.N. wants to revoke her status.

Emma Reilly a lawyer at the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) who was granted whistleblower protection by Guterres in 2020 tells Fox News that the U.N. is looking to find a way to rescind it.

Reilly alerted her bosses when she learned her office on the request of China handed over names of dissidents who were coming to the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Switzerland. Reilly said this resulted in pressure from Beijing on the dissidents not to make the trip. She said that included pressuring their families which in some cases resulted in arrests, torture and in one case a person was reported to have died in detention.

"I am collateral damage, and senior managers are now apparently so utterly devoid of ethics that they genuinely do not understand why I would prioritize the lives of human beings over my pay and benefits," Reilly told Fox News.

The attorney said that the U.N. "denied" she was a whistleblower and claimed, "that no reasonable person could ever think a secret policy of giving names of human rights advocates to China, and only to China, was a problem."

However, she said it was an ethics officer at the organization, "on the verge of retirement [that] finally displayed actual ethics." The officer looked into the case and "found that managers of the U.N. Human Rights Office were concerned only with giving China what it wanted" while Reilly says she "actually cared about human rights."

Fox News contacted the alternate chair of the U.N. ethics panel but was told to direct inquiries to the secretary-general's spokesman. Stephane Dujarric a spokesman for Guterres wrote in an email statement to Fox News that, "At this point, all I can tell you is that the questions you raised relate to a matter that is currently under internal review in accordance with the procedures set out in ST/SGB/2017/2/Rev.. As this remains an internal matter, we have no further comment at this time." A Fox News follow-up email asking if Reilly's whistleblower status had been withdrawn has so far not been answered.

Edward Flaherty an American lawyer who has represented whistleblowers throughout the U.N. system based in Geneva, Switzerland, told Fox News that "the egregious," aboutface in Reilly's case is a final nail in the coffin of the claim that the U.N. provides whistleblower protection.

"The recently announced decision of the U.N. Ethics Office to revoke a prior positive finding made by a now-retired official in the retaliation case of U.N. whistleblower Emma Reilly seems to suggest a rearguard action has been initiated by senior U.N. officials," according to Flaherty.