Making zero tolerance a reality: Enhancing collaboration across the United Nations to foster organizational culture change and tackle sexual harassment. Remarks of the UN Resident Coordinator for Moldova Mr. Simon Springett

We focus on building trust and creating safe spaces and making time for people to talk about these issues and think through and create common solutions. I hope this is a driver of cultural change.

This is particularly important in Moldova, where our staff profile has doubled in 2022 from just over 300 to just under 700. And our family of partners ahs also grown exponentially

Since 2021, sexual harassment has been integrated into our PSEA annual work plan as a stand-alone component. This was a decision taken by the members of the task force, and supported by the UNCT and myself. The objective of this was to identify risks and opportunities for sexual harassment prevention and to increase levels of understanding among staff and partners on existing protection mechanisms, and importantly for advocacy for greater inclusion of global best practices into national level response mechanisms.

The Task Force meetings then allowed focal points to share information about each agency’s internal procedures and improve focal points general understanding of sexual harassment and complaint mechanisms. This was important for the membership to acknowledge that the available information and existing complaint and referral mechanisms were different across Agencies – which encouraged us to work together to design common approach that would be of benefit for all staff.

From this perspective, a key priority was to increase information and awareness on sexual harassment. A poster with the most common types of sexual harassment in Moldova was designed. The poster was designed by my office and UN Women with contributions from the UN communication group, our Gender Thematic Group and our PSEA TF. It was translated into Russian, Romanian and English and distributed to all agencies to be placed in their buildings as well as in the partners' offices. Of course communications materials it only a first to step to sensitization.

The task force also recognised that there was limited information with regard to how victims of sexual harassment can report and seek assistance particularly when the perpetrators are national officials or beneficiaries. This was also an issue that was negatively impacting the population in general in Moldova. In response, we hired a legal expert to review the national legislation and public services (including existing referral pathways and those used for the refugee response).

Another proposed action of the task force was the creation of a small joint fund to provide initial legal assistance to victims of harassment to learn about their options, existing procedures and legal framework for them to report a case. This fund is still under consideration by the UNCT, but I do hope we can find a functional mechanism and resources for this.

To conclude, while agencies, funds, and programmes may have different follow up mechanisms, the general principals remain. Which makes collaborative efforts at the country possible – especially if we are able to successful build a culture of trust and openness and continually talk about sexual harassment through all layers of staffing about sexual harassment – and then of course ensuring that clear referral pathways are understood.