‘We Are Women Like You': UN Honours Peacekeepers For Work In Gender Empowerment
There, alongside civilian gender units, Ms. Syme met a group of local community members – both men and women. Partway through, she realised something was different.
'The women were not talking,' she told UN News. 'They were very quiet.'
Then she remembered that local cultural norms dictated women do not speak in public.
'We are women like you. We want to be able to help, but we don't know how we can help you,' she told them in a separate meeting. 'Can you please tell us what your problem is so we can see how we can help?'
It is for this sort of work founded in community trust building and a relentless belief in the importance of gender perspectives and empowerment in peacekeeping, that the UN will honour two exceptional women peacekeepers on Thursday as part of International Peacekeepers' Day.
Ms. Syme is this year's winner of the UN Military Gender Advocate of 2024 Award.
'[Ms. Syme's] dedication has not only improved the effectiveness of UNISFA's operations but also ensured that the mission is more reflective of and responsive to the communities it serves,' said Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix.
The other honouree is Chief Superintendent Zainab Mbalu Gbla of Sierra Leone who has been named Woman Police Officer of the year for her work with UNISFA.
'Chief Superintendent Gbla embodies the work of the United Nations to improve lives and shape futures,' said Mr. Lacroix.
Gender and peacekeeping
The UN Woman Police Officer of the Year Award was established in 2011 and the UN Military Gender Advocate of the Year Award was first presented five years later.
Both awards recognize peacekeepers whose work has substantially advanced the integration of gender perspectives and empowerment into peacekeeping.
In 2000, the Security Council passed a resolution which affirmed the essential role women play in peacebuilding, peacekeeping and humanitarian responses. Since then, the United Nations has worked to fully integrate gender perspectives into peacekeeping.
According to Ms. Syme, applying gender perspectives should be a 'daily task' for all peacekeepers.
'We need to understand the gender dynamics within our area of operation, otherwise, we might not be able to have the right intervention, we might not be able to carry out the right activities,' she said.
Intergenerational legacy
Ms. Gbla experienced the impact of peacekeeping herself as a civilian in Sierra Leone in the wake of a war that ravaged her country.
'I saw people coming from different parts of the world just to bring peace to my country… That's why I told myself that one day I'd love to be a peacekeeper – to help other people, to return the favour,' Ms. Gbla told UN News.
As a UNISFA gender officer, not only did she create a school programme and female mentorship network where none had existed before, she also worked diligently to ensure that learning was fun, incorporating performing arts and visual aids.
'[The women of Abyei] are ready to work, they are ready to do things for themselves if peace allows them. The children are ready to go to school, if peace allows them,' she said.
A health campaign in Abyei
Ms. Syme's meeting with the women of Sector North was the beginning of an enormously successful health campaign in the region which discussed harmful practices such as child marriage and female genital mutilation, the two issues which the community women had identified.
The campaign engaged both men and women, and Ms. Syme said that she was deeply impressed and moved by the response of the male leaders who, through the campaign, realized the harm that practices of child marriage and female genital mutilation had caused.
'[The leaders] promised that they are going to revise these cultural practices so that going forward, they will not do it again,' Ms. Syme said.
This campaign happened in June 2024 and has driven Ms. Syme's work since then, work which includes training over 1,500 UNISFA officials in gender-responsive peacekeeping.
'It has motivated me,' Ms. Syme said. 'It has motivated me a lot.'
The future of peacekeeping through gender
Both Ms. Syme and Ms. Gbla will receive their awards on International Peacekeeping Day. This year, Member States and UN officials will be asked to consider the future of peacekeeping.
For both Ms. Syme and Ms. Gbla, the future of peacekeeping and security cannot be disentangled from gender perspectives and empowerment.
'If you don't know the gender dynamics of the area, if you don't know who is in charge, if you don't know what will benefit who…you may think you are providing security, but you are not really providing security,' Ms. Syme said.
Ms. Gbla, in discussing her award, paid homage to all the women who wear a UN uniform, underlining their tireless work in the pursuit of peace.
'Each of us [women] faces unique challenges in our respective missions, yet our collective goal remains the same – to foster peace and protect the vulnerable."
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Abuse in care: ‘People need to step down or be removed'
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon stunned Lake Alice survivors and their supporters last year when he acknowledged in Parliament that they had been tortured and he offered the apology they'd been waiting for their whole lives. Successive Prime Ministers before him had avoided using the torture word (even though Helen Clark had used the term while in opposition) because of the potential legal and financial liability. But the finding of torture by the Royal Commission into Abuse in State Care and two findings by the United Nations that New Zealand had breached the Convention Against Torture left little option but to admit what so many people had been saying all along. But in a letter to a survivor that is likely to be a template of the letter all current survivors will receive, Luxon goes one step further in what he admits. One paragraph in particular of the letter, signed by Luxon and Minister of Mental Health Matt Doocey and obtained by Newsroom, says: 'People, institutions and systems failed to provide the safety and protection you deserved. Worse still, the State failed to investigate what happened long after the closure of the unit. Even when it was clear what happened, the state relied on previous investigations which were inadequate, delayed the handing over of relevant records, and continued to fight those survivors who tried to seek redress through the Courts. The state's actions protected perpetrators and meant those people were never brought to justice.' This is one of the clearest official statements anywhere of the institutional failures that bedevilled the Lake Alice case for more than half a century and also the Crown's response to victims of abuse in other institutions. It is also a textbook description of the crimes of obstruction of justice and perversion of the course of justice. The only thing missing from this statement is the identities of the people involved. Luxon starts off saying the failure was not only institutions and systems but people. But by the end of the paragraph he has wrapped it all up in the vague notion of the state. The state 'failed to investigate,' but then 'relied on' investigations that were inadequate, and 'fought survivors' while it 'protected perpetrators.' These perpetrators that the state protected committed crimes against children including rape and torture. But these aren't the actions of an institution. They include actions and inactions higher up in that generic institution. Is Luxon including people in offices like those of his Attorney-General Judith Collins, or the Solicitor General Una Jagose, or the head of the Crown Response Office Rajesh Chana when he says the state fought survivors, relied on inadequate investigations, and as an entity protected those lower down who perpetrated crimes? If so, why are people still in positions of authority and why are they directly involved in the major decisions on redress for the victims Luxon is apologising to? *** A group of survivors was asked to come up with a high level design for redress. One of the things the group was adamant about was that any redress system needed to be independent of the institutions that had been responsible for the abuse, but had also fought victims when they had tried to hold them accountable. But it was also based on the Royal Commission's redress report that recommended the new redress scheme be 'independent of the institutions where the abuse took place.' The proposal the group came up with said: 'The entity must be survivor-led, both for management and governance. It must be independent of government, and faith-based organisations, so that it is not subject to political pressures and to changing governments, alterations of ministerial portfolios or changing organisational priorities. Above all, it must be independent as it is vital that survivors can trust the Survivor-Led Redress System as representing and responding to survivor needs, rather than prioritising the demands of the government of the day.' This request also lined up with international law. Principles in the UN Convention Against Torture and its supporting documents – which have been worked on and refined by an international team of human rights lawyers over decades – make similar demands for independence. The basic premise is that the perpetrator institutions and individuals must be kept at a tangible distance from the process of putting things right. This is not simply an abstract structural issue. Expecting them to deal with an agency that is ultimately responsible not only for the abuse they suffered but also the denial over decades created further trauma. It is akin to forcing a victim to deal with a perpetrator that has never taken responsibility. The perpetrator still holds the power over the victim. The survivor-repeated calls for independence were declined by the Government. The Government's announcement that the redress scheme was not going to be independent of the agencies that were responsible for the abuse was met with predictable hostility and criticism from survivors. How faith-based institutions fitted into the redress wasn't even mentioned. In her announcement, the minister coordinating the Government's response, Erica Stanford, acknowledged the calls for independence, but argued that this would add time and cost that was not going to have any direct benefit to survivors. 'I acknowledge that a key recommendation of both the Royal Commission and the Redress Design Group was for a new independent redress entity. The Government was faced with a difficult choice: do we spend more time and money on setting up a new scheme, or do we provide more to survivors now through the current redress process? 'For Budget 25 we have prioritised improving the current system as quickly as possible for survivors and investing in changes that have a direct impact for them,' Stanford said. If the cost of setting up a separate entity was the problem, then that hasn't stopped the government setting up the Crown Response Office to carry out the redress, an office headed by Rajesh Chhana who had previous involvement in the Crown's response to allegations of torture at Lake Alice. The suggestion that the current system can be improved is insulting for many survivors, particularly those who have already had dealings with it. It was the same system that failed them in the first place and can hardly be relied on to be trusted now. Governments – both Labour and National – failed in this independence right from the start and this has only reinforced the distrust from survivors. There are a string of people who have had prior professional involvement in the Crown's response to state abuse, responses that many would argue are disqualifying. Even now the scrutiny of those involved is structured in such a way that it creates impunity. When going through some of the names involved that starts to look deliberate, particularly when some of those names are in charge of the Crown's plans for the next iteration of redress. The Crown Response Unit (which has morphed into the Crown Response Office) was set up to respond to the Royal Commission's investigations and its reports. But of the board of chief executives from government departments that were involved in setting up the Unit, Iona Holsted from the Ministry of Education was chosen to chair the organisation. It wasn't hard to figure out that this was a problem from the Royal Commission's own report on redress. The Royal Commission's report found: 'Some officials suggested lawyers were drumming up false or exaggerated claims. The Ministry of Social Development's Deputy Chief Executive of the time, Iona Holsted, even reported concerns in a memorandum that lawyer Sonja Cooper was behaving unethically, and speculated that she might have influenced claimants' memories when gathering evidence, and 'may deliberately target periods of time when records are poorest' in the claims she made on behalf of her clients. We find these suggestions entirely unfounded. The ministry's current Deputy Chief Executive, Simon MacPherson, said the language in the memorandum was 'inappropriate and regrettable'.' It wasn't regrettable enough for Holsted to finish in the role. The appointment of Rajesh Chhana to be chief executive of the Crown Response Unit also undermined survivors' trust. In his role as deputy secretary of policy at the Ministry of Justice, Chhana introduced New Zealand's report to the UN's Committee Against Torture in 2015. This report was one among a raft of reports put before the UN that failed to adequately address the issue of torture at Lake Alice. The Royal Commission said in its report on Lake Alice: 'In its concluding remarks on the sixth report in 2015, the committee (against torture) said New Zealand had 'failed to investigate or hold any individual accountable for the nearly 200 allegations of torture and ill- treatment against minors at Lake Alice Hospital. The UN had been repeatedly warning New Zealand that it wasn't complying with the Convention Against Torture and eventually found it was in breach. Twice. Despite the public service and judiciary still employing individuals who have been implicated in some way with the Crown's failed response to victims, the Minister for the Public Service, Judith Collins, told Cabinet colleagues there was no one who needed to be held accountable. The Public Service Commission was asked to review the actions of any individuals mentioned in the Royal Commission's report and found no one needed to be held accountable. But the scope of how actions of public servants and others were defined was narrow to the point of absurdity. A footnote in the Cabinet paper signed-off by Collins said 'cover-ups were defined in our previous briefing as claims in the final RCOI report that unnamed public or state servants knew that individuals were abusers but still employed them in the public or state service and/or ignored complaints of abuse or failed to deal with such complaints appropriately.' This definition is only focused on the original perpetrators and those who might have first received complaints about them at the time. That is about actions and decisions that are more than 30 years ago. It fails to capture incidents and actions by individuals subsequent to that, such as the lawyers and officials who went to great lengths to deny the original crimes and defeat victims who were trying to achieve accountability. For example, it doesn't capture those involved in spending $90,000 on private investigators to try to dig dirt on victims who were taking the Government to court and then covering it up from media and an inquiry into the use of private investigators. It doesn't capture repeated incidents of Crown Law failing to provide evidence to the police or to victims and the lawyers representing them. Those failures are about legal discovery – why has there been no investigation of these incidents and those involved? The paper also refers repeatedly to 'the RCOI (Royal Commission of Inquiry) period'. This refers to the Royal Commission's scope that was between 1950 and 1999. Therefore, the review doesn't capture actions by individuals post-2000, which is when most of the cover-up occurred. The Royal Commission had discretion to look outside that period, and it did, particularly in the 2000s when many of the greatest failures happened in relation to redress and accountability. So why did Collins exclude this period from scrutiny, particularly since those individuals are the ones most likely to still be working for Crown agencies? Collins' paper says: 'As Chair of the CEs Group, Statutory Deputy Public Service Commissioner Rebecca Kitteridge will set expectations with chief executives regarding an ongoing commitment to ensuring allegations relating to the RCOI period are explored appropriately when raised, including considering individual accountability where relevant.' But Kitteridge defended Rajesh Chhana's appointment to head the Crown Response Unit even after it was exposed that he had led a delegation to the UN in 2015 that failed to address the UN's concerns about the torture at Lake Alice. And Chhana now disavows the statements he and Judith Collins made at the UN. In a written statement, Kitteridge said the Public Service Commission ran 'an independent, robust process which included a survivor of abuse in care on the selection panel.' Were the full details of Chhana's background at the UN disclosed to that survivor? If not, why is Kitteridge relying on this anonymous survivor to validate the decision? How robust was the process when Minister Erica Stanford was not informed of Chhana's previous involvement, despite stipulating that she didn't want anyone with a compromised history? Chhana had a strong background in public policy, with his work at the Ministry of Justice focusing on improving access to justice and promoting human rights, Kitteridge said. What she didn't mention is that he was the GM of the Ministry of Justice's unit to ensure New Zealand complied with the UN Convention Against Torture. Which meant he failed at his job because New Zealand was found in breach of the Convention Against Torture. So he didn't adequately promote human rights and access to justice, even though that was his job. Kitteridge said Chhana's work in the international human rights area (including appearing as an official in UN forums) was disclosed during the appointment process and was seen as valuable subject knowledge for this role. Disclosed to who? And what exactly is this valuable knowledge Chhana possesses? 'Mr Chhana is well placed to lead the Crown Response Office and is committed to ensuring the perspectives of survivors are front and centre of the Government's response,' Kitteridge said. But he didn't centre the perspectives of survivors when he appeared at the UN. And is he simply well placed to continue the Government's lack of independence and not putting survivors first? 'There is nothing I have seen that would suggest Mr Chhana is not suitable for this role. The panel supported Mr Chhana because he was the best candidate. I am confident Mr Chhana is the right person to lead this important work,' Kitteridge continued. Which raises questions about Kitteridge's independent judgment and what it is she's actually looking at. Has she read the Lake Alice report and the repeated failures to hold anyone accountable for the torture, rape and assaults of hundreds of children at Lake Alice and the abuse of thousands more at other institutions? That failure happened because a number of public servants didn't do their job and/or actively did the opposite of what they should have done, and many are still currently in high level roles. Chhana was in a crucial role at the Ministry of Justice when the Crown was continuing its ongoing denial and failure to investigate, which put New Zealand in breach of the Convention Against Torture. What exactly would Kitteridge and Collins consider to be disqualifying? And Kitteridge's history bears mentioning – for four years between 1997 and 2001 Kitteridge was a Crown Counsel at Crown Law Office. While there is no record that she was directly involved in the Lake Alice case, this was a crucial period when Crown Law was fighting litigation from Lake Alice victims. From 2003 to 2008, Kitteridge was Deputy Secretary of the Cabinet. There were ongoing discussions in Crown Law and Cabinet about Lake Alice over this period because of the police investigation and the Government's responses to the UN. She's unlikely to have been unaware of Lake Alice or the questions that it raised about torture. Because Collins is only looking at the period up to 1999, she is missing much questionable behaviour by Crown officials and lawyers, many of whom are now in senior positions not only in the public service but also in the judiciary. One Crown lawyer interviewed Dr Selwyn Leeks' ex-wife, who gave evidence that could have been incriminating in court. It doesn't appear the police were aware of this evidence, so it could never be put in front of a jury. If the scrutiny stops at 1999, that might explain why neither Kitteridge nor Collins seem concerned about Una Jagose's role in Crown Law over the past two decades. Or perhaps the scope of the inquiry has ended up being designed to protect such people. Jagose was involved in the White case, a legal test case in 2007, where the judge found the Crown was not liable on technicalities, despite finding that the victim had been sexually abused at least 13 times. The Crown knew that the main perpetrator Michael Ansell, the cook at Hokio Beach School, was a convicted paedophile but withheld this from the victim's lawyer Sonja Cooper. The Crown also used private investigators to try and dig dirt on the victims in the lead up to the trial, something Crown Law and MSD lied about when I asked in 2016. Jagose was either present at or aware of the cross examination of the victim Earl White where it was implied that he consented to the abuse because he'd been given cigarettes. In his evidence he said: 'The Crown's lawyer [Kristy McDonald KC] was asking a lot of detailed questions about the sexual abuse by Mr Ansell. The judge interrupted and asked where the questions were going because it appeared that she was suggesting I consented to the sexual assaults as a child.' This aggressive attitude continued. Keith Wiffin. Photo: Aaron Smale In January 2009 Una Jagose advised MSD it should take 'more proactive and aggressive steps' on claims by Keith Wiffin and two other survivors with a view to having them dismissed on limitation grounds without going to trial – something it had previously told the court it wouldn't do. This was despite Crown Law and MSD knowing the perpetrator had been convicted of sexual abuse of children at Epuni, information that was not disclosed to Wiffin and his lawyer Sonja Cooper. Jagose noted this approach would have the 'strategic advantage' of delaying or preventing a trial in another case involving Kohitere Boys' Home, and so avoid 'an extremely lengthy, difficult, costly, and public examination' of issues relating to that institution. That institution was the subject of a whole volume in the Royal Commission's report which documented severe and extreme violence, including sexual violence. The Royal Commission's report drew a direct link between the violence of Hokio and Kohitere and gangs and prisons. Was this the kind of 'public examination' Jagose was keen to avoid because it could prove costly to the Crown? In another email in March 2009 by Una Jagose to MSD, she noted a deterioration in Wiffin's mental health 'on account of having to give evidence' and wondered how tenaciously he was pursuing his claim and whether, if offered psychological services, 'he would settle or give up?'. Jagose was possibly referring to evidence Wiffin gave at the White trial in 2007, where he also saw the ruthless cross-examination of the victim by Crown lawyers. It was partly based on that experience he decided not to take his case to trial. Jagose had viewed the threat of the court process as a way to pressure victims and into giving up. In an earlier email from Jagose to MSD in 2006 she said 'some plaintiffs may give up along the way … if they see another plaintiff having to go through the litigation process, face cross-examination etc'. Not only did Crown lawyers attack the credibility of victims, they also withheld information that proved their allegations. Jagose and others within Crown Law and MSD did not provide relevant information from victims such as Wiffin about perpetrators. This information was also not provided to lawyer Sonja Cooper, such as the convictions of a perpetrator at Hokio Beach School during the White case. When questioned at the Royal Commission about one example in 2007 of Crown Law's failure to disclose the criminal convictions of a perpetrator who worked at Epuni Boys Home, Jagose could not give an answer: 'I don't know, I can't answer. It should have been. The information was available, and the request was for that material.' In 2020, Crown Law withheld evidence from the police during an investigation into Lake Alice that only happened because the UN found New Zealand in breach of the Convention Against Torture. Sir Brian Roche was asked by Newsroom why the scope of the inquiry was limited to the Royal Commission period ending in 1999. This question was not directly answered in the initial response. In follow-up questions, some of the incidents documented by the Royal Commission were brought to Roche's attention, including the failure to provide information about convicted paedophiles from victims and their lawyers and other information being not given to police. He was asked if he thought this behaviour was appropriate for a public servant, but a spokesperson said he had nothing to add to his previous answers. Judith Collins said in the Cabinet paper, without a hint of irony: 'It is also important to acknowledge and address the systemic factors that enabled this behaviour to occur and go unaddressed for so long.' One of the factors that allowed the abuse to 'go unaddressed for so long' was Collins making a point-blank denial that state torture occurred in New Zealand at the UN in 2014 when she was Minister of Justice. That added another 10 years onto the wait for Lake Alice victims. She has not resiled from that statement, despite an admission by the Prime Minister that torture did occur. There were also multiple failures by the police, including on Collins' watch as Minister of Police, that allowed the abuse to 'go unaddressed for so long'. That failure allowed criminals to avoid accountability for abusing and torturing children. But the lack of accountability isn't just happening for the past actions of the Crown's agents. While survivors have different views on lots of things, one thing they can agree on is they don't want any children to go through the kind of abuse they did. The survivors who put together the High Level Design said 'the concern expressed universally by survivors that systems of care must not continue to perpetuate abuse and produce further/future survivors.' But currently there is still abuse of children in the custody of the state. A report from the Independent Children's Monitor this year found more than 500 children had been abused in state custody. The previous year it was more than 400, so the numbers are increasing. A large number of those cases of abuse are in youth justice facilities and yet the current Government has set up a boot camp pilot while telling the public that this will be different. One of the Royal Commission's recommendations has been languishing since Labour was in government, but could provide a deterrent to the state's ongoing abuse of children. In its redress report from 2021 the commission recommended that: 'The Crown should create in legislation: a right to be free from abuse in care; a non-delegable duty to ensure all reasonably practicable steps are taken to protect this right; and direct liability for a failure to fulfil the duty.' Labour did less than nothing to implement this very basic but important recommendation. When a bill on oversight of Oranga Tamariki was being ushered through Parliament, the Minister for MSD Carmel Sepuloni hadn't even read the redress report and didn't know about the recommendations. When the National-led coalition came into power it ticked off a number of pet policies in 100 days, but ignored this one. Instead it was draughting up a bill to abolish section 7AA which provided an obligation to protect Maori children under the Treaty of Waitangi. The Government was in a hurry to remove this accountability, saying it was race-based, while failing to legislate for accountability to protect every child. For all its claims to be concerned about protecting children, Act is silent on this. The Cost That Can't be Counted While stories in Australia and North America have become common knowledge globally, for some strange reason New Zealand is lagging in its recognition of this history. And it's not because it's a minor issue. I've compared some of the numbers and New Zealand took more indigenous children from a smaller population in a shorter space of time than either Canada or Australia. The story of the Stolen Generations and Residential Schools in North America are a history that is globally known. But New Zealand's parallel history of this kind of abuse has been silenced. We have silenced the victims. All of our government institutions repeatedly fail to recognise this trauma that manifests not only in individuals but in generations of families and whole communities that have been infected by the virus of catastrophic childhood trauma. Instead the victims are blamed or labelled, ostracised and vilified, and the institutions then go about inflicting punitive measures that add further trauma. I've witnessed how victims try to get help from Corrections, Police, Health, Mental Health, Criminal Justice, MSD, Education sectors, only to be failed or turned away again and again. The ongoing consequences for the individual victims, their families, their communities and the country keep piling up because we have repeatedly failed to recognise the trauma that lives amongst us. I have heard people describe unspeakable acts that they suffered as children. I've seen the mask slip on gang members and people who have spent most of their lives in prison. When that mask slips I've caught a momentary glimpse of a frightened, hurt, traumatised child that hides behind that mask, a mask of aggression and hostility and distrust that many have worn so long they don't know how to take it off. They don't know how to take it off because no one ever believed them and they are trapped in a lie constructed by someone else. I have witnessed how that lie has been constructed, the ways people at the highest levels have deliberately gone about finding ways to absolve the Crown of the harm it has caused, while leaving the victims of this harm to carry the burden of those crimes. This narrative played out over decades and involved a total imbalance and abuse of power. That abuse of power brutally silenced the victims. Their evidence, their stories were deemed to be inadmissible because they shattered the image we'd constructed of ourselves as a country. And all the while we as a country have also been bearing the direct and indirect costs of the harm done to thousands of New Zealanders, while footing the bill for the Crown to cover it up. Redress cannot happen for victims until the truth we have been avoiding for decades is no longer an option. One aspect of that truth is that childhood trauma does not just live in the victims' past. It shapes every aspect of their present reality. But cracks have opened up in the Crown's impunity, even for those who work inside the institutions that have constructed it. Solicitor General Una Jagose copped heckling and verbal abuse at parliament when she gave an apology for Crown Law. Some stood up and turned their back towards Jagose while she spoke. It was made known loud and clear to the Solicitor General what survivors thought of how she and Crown Law had treated them. They had found their voice and it was heard in the corridors of power. 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The trauma from people who may have had things covered up by Crown Law 20 years ago, ten years ago, were still shouting and upset and saying things like liar at the event I was at at Pipitea Marae. There was loud booing, you could have cut the emotion with a knife. This is still a real issue for people, it's something that I think needs to be looked at further. I think to date the response to what has been done by officials of the Crown to try and limit liability for the state for abuse in care needs to be looked at under a microscope. And possibly, yes, people need to step down or be removed.'
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- RNZ News
UN letter: PM firm with ministers on who should be sending responses
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says he has made it "pretty clear" to his ministers how they should handle correspondence with the United Nations, as the coalition's letter-writing saga drags on. Appearing at his post-Cabinet media conference on Monday, Luxon was pressed on RNZ's revelations that Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith had been consulted before David Seymour issued a forthright reply to the UN in July. "I'm not going to get into that," Luxon told RNZ. "We've canvassed that before." Luxon reiterated his "very clear position" that Winston Peters, as foreign minister, was responsible for coordinating all responses to the UN. Asked what it said about his Cabinet that multiple ministers appeared to misunderstand that process, Luxon was blunt. "It's pretty clear to them now," he said. "I've made it pretty clear." Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii However, new correspondence - as reported by RNZ on Saturday - show Seymour's staff stated that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade's preferred approach was actually for a joint reply from "relevant ministers" Seymour, Goldsmith and Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka. The controversy stems from a June letter from UN special rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples Albert K Barume, who flagged concerns that Seymour's Regulatory Standards Bill excluded Māori traditions and failed to uphold Treaty of Waitangi principles. Seymour, writing as regulations minister, fired back a response in early July, describing the critique as "presumptive, condescending and wholly misplaced" and "an affront to New Zealand's sovereignty". That letter was later withdrawn and both Luxon and Peters publicly rebuked Seymour for bypassing proper process. Peters eventually sent a government-wide response in August , striking a softer tone and expressing regret for the "breakdown in protocol". On Saturday, RNZ revealed new documents, obtained under the Official Information Act, which showed Seymour had run his draft past Goldsmith beforehand and been told his colleague was "happy for us to send it". Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
