A former senior UN food agency official has alleged he was fired last week for his work highlighting hunger in Gaza, and has launched an appeal against his dismissal.
Benjamin Davis said the leadership of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) had refused to renew his contract as director of its rural transformation and gender equality division because his team had published a brief on hunger in Gaza and held a seminar on the subject last year, and because he had taken part in weekly "moment of silence" vigils on FAO grounds for those killed.
The seminar on hunger in Gaza last September triggered a complaint from the Israeli mission to the FAO, which also sent a diplomat to take pictures of staff taking part in a moment of silence gathering last October, according to a FAO staff report filed at the time.
Davis left the FAO last week after 26 years of service. Video of the event shows FAO staff standing and applauding him as he left the Rome headquarters for the last time.
"It's a nice feeling that I'm not alone, that other people are behind me in this," Davis said. "I was stopped constantly in the hallways by people, even those that I didn't know, just to shake my hand or just to thank me or just to say that they supported me or that they were upset."
The FAO did not respond to the Guardian's request for comment on Monday, but the organisation's director general, Qu Dongyu, appeared to refer to Davis's dismissal in public remarks last Tuesday, in which he threatened to fire more people for what he deemed to be political activism.
"We are not going to allow you to play the game here of human rights," said Qu, a veteran Chinese agronomist. "Of course human rights are very important, but they have a human rights agency in Geneva. If you want to take care [of human rights], go there."
"Thats why [when] some senior members play political games here, I fire him," he said, suggesting that Davis had violated staff regulations. "I'm a very soft person. I didn't fire that many. I'm going to use my last year ... to fire more if they're against the law."
Davis said he and fellow FAO staff members had been stunned by Qu's remarks.
"Even more than the threat about firing people was just what he said about human rights. I think that really shocked people because it undermined the foundations of why we're here basically, or why FAO is part of the United Nations and why the United Nations exists," he said.
"We're surely an organisation which is based on human rights, right?" Davis added, pointing to the FAO slogan: "Leave no one behind."
The official letter informing Davis that his contract would not be renewed said that Qu was "no longer confident in your ability to discharge your obligations in the manner required of a senior international civil servant".
The letter cited paragraphs in the official code of conduct for international civil servants regarding "honesty, truthfulness, impartiality and incorruptibility" and limits on public expression of personal views on "controversial matters".
In his written response, Davis said the approach taken by FAO leadership was "simply wrong".
"Silence in the face of suffering and injustice is not neutrality, it is complicity," he wrote. "Shutting down discussion on the starvation of the Palestinian people weakens the reputation of the organisation and the legitimacy of our mandate. Being true to our mandate calls for a frank and open discussion."