It didn’t matter much that Betsy was born into a well-educated family, with a banker dad and a project-coordinator mom who worked for Plan International. Nor did it matter that, as a child, Betsy went to a quality private school on a lush and peaceful compound in Maua, a six-hour drive from Nairobi, immersed in a melting pot of expat families and European missionaries at the heart of Kenya’s agricultural powerhouse, Meru County.
Nor did it matter that she clinched a master’s degree in software engineering from the University of Liverpool, following undergrad studies in computer science at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology, and a business management qualification from the Kenya Institute of Management.
And, for a long time, while temporarily contracted by the United Nations, it neither mattered that she received recognition from then-UNCTAD Secretary-General, Supachai Panitchpakdi, for her role in the launch and maintenance of the organization’s 13th session website in 2012, nor that she was among the frontline IT consultants that supported UNOG a year later through the colossal task of shifting from the old management system, IMIS, to present-day Umoja.
None of that mattered, Betsy recalls, when she would come knocking at an HR office in the UN system, aspiring to a fair shot at a stable post that had just opened.
Whether it’s a question of chance, timing, high volume of applicants, or a certain HR preference for geographies that contribute more to the UN regular budget – we cannot tell. But one thing is sure, Betsy repeatedly felt that her chances at a UN Professional-grade post often collapsed under the weight of her Global South baggage: her surname (Ntongai), her passport (Kenya), her complexion (black).
The second-born in a family of five siblings, Betsy grew up in such a multicultural mix that she never considered race dynamics to be a thing. Of course, some ethnic tensions might surface here and there among the 40-odd tribes of Kenya, but that was that. She’ll later learn that her childhood was a gleeful bubble.
Betsy was in her mid-20s when she had her first encounter with a close cousin of discrimination: xenophobia. Being a newly married “trailing spouse,” as she likes to joke, she had moved with her doctor husband to Namibia in 2008. It wasn’t long before she started hearing some members of a deeply segregated black community there say things like, “Hey, go back to where you came from and leave our jobs alone!”
She remembers feeling stuck. She had just witnessed her native Kenya teetering on the brink of chaos after the wave of political violence that surrounded the general elections of 2007-2008.
But luck will be quick to intervene: a timely opportunity opened for her husband in International Geneva the following year. Betsy packed up her stuff and dreams and flew over the Alps to call Rousseau’s birthplace home, holding tight to her two-month-old son, Manuel, a name derived from the Hebrew “Immanuel”, which means “God is with us”.
“Truth be told, the boy lived up to his name,” Betsy quips.
The young couple were now excited to make it big in the land of premium chocolate, premium cheese, premium watches, premium resorts, and premium banking. Instead, awaiting them there was the raw onion of shocks that Geneva knows how to keep garden-fresh for the sparkling eyes of its new pretenders: the language shock, the housing shock, the schooling shock, the shopping shock, the social-life shock, and, ho ho, the job-market shock.
Today, while Betsy dissociates with the “victim mentality” that sometimes envelops the issue of discrimination, she maintains that being “a person of color” has worked against her and against many others in recruitment processes and mobility opportunities – even though, oddly enough, she had managed to land a short UN gig as Team Assistant at the Office of Internal Oversight Services within five months of her arrival in Geneva, which is a record by some measures.
Now consider the following: in 2009 and again in 2011, long before she became a well-integrated, sprightly team leader at Palais des Nations, managing an IT cost-recovery portfolio of over $20 million, Betsy was required to sign an HR document where she pledged to refrain from applying for future Professional-grade positions at the UN.
That pledge will keep Betsy in professional limbo for years, hanging on to a long string of temporary arrangements and short-term contracts.
“I believe that has been abolished now, but this is what we walked into in those years,” Betsy tells me, referring to the dubious HR clause. For her, this episode is just one among a litany of sobering reminders that the blight of prejudice – professional, racial, or otherwise – is continuing to act as a potent social-mobility filter, including at an organization that sits on such a high moral ground as the UN does.
“There are discriminatory HR clauses and blind spots working against brilliant minds in General Service posts as well,” she adds.
Let’s keep things in perspective: workers of all stripes – irrespective of race or origin – might get stuck at some point in their career in a cycle of temporary contracts or a rut of unfavorable treatment. Plus, consultancy work is not an insult, it can be the preferred arrangement for many professionals.
In Betsy’s case, however, there was an extra layer of gray. She saw close colleagues with lower qualifications and lesser experience – but with a different complexion and geographic origin – being selected for posts she was objectively better suited for but was obliged to sit out. “They are my friends to date,” she points out, referring to those colleagues, with the wisdom of a wounded ego that has now scarred.
“It’s not a level playing field for everybody,” she observes. “Some have to jump a thousand stones, some two stones, to get to the same level. So, I feel like I’ve jumped a thousand stones so far, or a million stones, to where I am. And I want those obstacles removed.”
A bit incredulous, I ask Betsy if she ever contested such a treatment on the grounds of discrimination or malpractice or if she demanded an explanation. She leans forward, her voice softens as old memories tug at her vocal cords: “You had no guts, and you had no authority. You should feel happy you already have a gig! You just wanted to put one foot in the system.”
Well, the system will finally oblige in 2020, rewarding Besty with a P-3 post as IT Officer, after one last two-year engagement during which she helped oversee UNOG’s shift from IBM Lotus Notes to the Microsoft Office 365 we use today.
The long wait might have been worth it after all, and, surely, Betsy is not the unluckiest of them all. She tells me about a colleague – also of African descent – who has grown extremely demotivated and resentful after having been stuck at the G-3 grade for over 20 years now. When I probe further, she explains that the case is still wrapped in confidentiality.
The term “confidentiality” will come back several times during our interview. In fact, Betsy on occasion would semi-playfully whisper to me something like, “This should probably stay off the record!”, as if to signal that certain assertions are still too hard on the nose, that certain taboos are still radioactive, and that self-censorship residues still persist.
“It’s an eggshell, so you want to walk around it skillfully as you look for ways to confront this deep-rooted monster – and you don’t want to seem to be too much,” she admits. “If you speak about racism, you are doomed; if you don’t speak about racism, you’ll experience it.”
Betsy and I met in early April for this interview and sat on the 5th floor of H Building, the refreshing architectural oddity that stands as the sole challenger to the soul-taming sameness of the Palais. Jutting out of a leafy hillside overlooking Lac Léman, this modern eruption of geometric glass and synthetic material appears like a vigorous objection to Geneva’s signature penchant for monotony.
Betsy embodies some version of this vigorous objection. She was dressed in a flamboyant azure-and-magenta blazer themed like a psychedelic splash of sorts, featuring a smart-casual twist on an otherwise traditional East African garment, with her hair worn in thin dreads and her nails manicured in fresh fuchsia. Her style encapsulates perhaps the person she is today: a blend of authentic Africana, global citizenry, and here-I-am energy.
Over the course of the interview, I realize again and again that, at the UN, you can’t say everything exactly like you see it, as certain balances – perceived or real – will always have to be maintained, even when you have Betsy’s triple mandate as UNOG’s Anti-Racism Advocate, as Chair of the Working Group on Combating Racism, and as Chair of the Geneva Alliance Against Racism (GAAR), which in 2023 saw over 20 international organizations across the city vowing to address racism at the workplace through 16 pledges, including one on the issue of candidate selection and recruitment.
But Betsy is resourceful, and she will surprise you. On March 21, she sat on a podium at the Palais, next to the Director-General of UNOG, and delivered an “I Have a Dream” moment, through a powerful speech she prepared to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
This annual event has been observed since 1966 against a much darker backdrop of racism, segregation, and murder, as it followed from the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, when South African police opened fire on a crowd of peaceful demonstrators, killing at least 69 of them for protesting against apartheid’s notorious “pass laws”.
Betsy had cried twice writing and rewriting her speech. Though the text was partially toned down upon feedback from her husband who deemed some intimations to be “a bit too far,” her words and voice still hit a nerve.
Here is a selection of passages from Betsy’s statement, as she read it before an audience of diplomats, rights advocates, and UN staff:
Today, we gather here to confront a truth – a truth that is often uncomfortable but one we can no longer look away from. […]
By now, we know and agree that racism is not a relic of the past. It is here: in our workplaces and our hiring practices. We also know and agree that racism is not an abstract issue. It is a lived reality – felt in the whispereddoubts about a colleague’s competence, in the overlooked promotions, in the silent but crushing weight of exclusion, in the colleagues who have to work five times more to prove their worth or recognition, lived every day with decades of unjustified temporary contracts, lived every day in an overload of duties, unlike their peers.
It is in the very structures of our organization here in Geneva, and many colleagues would not dare to show face or participate in such an event for fear of retaliation. How can we preach peace and unity to the world if we do not embody it? And the question we must ask ourselves today is: What have we truly done to change this? […]
Have we truly dismantled the barriers that keep so many locked out of opportunity? Or have we merely made the right statements, attended the right panels, and then carried on with business as usual?
One of the greatest injustices in our workplaces is the unequal access to opportunity. Talent is universal, but opportunity is not. We see it every day – recruitment practices that favor familiarity over fairness, career growth that is dictated by privilege rather than potential.
And let’s be candid: the Global North must do more than acknowledge this inequality. It must act – not out of charity, but out of a deep recognition that merit and excellence exist everywhere. That a candidate from Juba, São Paulo, or Dhaka should have the same opportunity as one from Boston, London, or Madrid.
Today, like many other days, we call for accountability, top-down from the heads of entities to each and every employee of the United Nations and other GAAR entities. […]
This is personal to me. This is my pledge to you. I will listen. I will speak loudly about all the issues of racism and racial discrimination as Betsy Ntongai, a black woman from Kenya, your Anti-Racism Advocate appointed to serve at the UN in this day and age. […]
And I promise you this: we will not stop until justice is not only promised but delivered. […]
You can imagine the confetti and thumb-up emojis that soon began beeping on Betsy’s phone. “I received tens and tens of emails telling me, ‘Thank you, Betsy! I felt you! That was me you were talking about!’,” she recalls. “It’s a journey walked by so many people, who may not be courageous enough to speak loudly, with no fear of judgment … I was speaking from a point of rawness, reality, a point of ‘I know this journey so well, it’s real; it’s not some relic or some historical story, it’s what I live in my everydayness’.”
On that first day of spring, a cumulus of silence started to dissipate. Several new racial discrimination complaints were referred to Betsy by the Ombudsman in just the two weeks that followed her speech – not to mention the staff members who reached out to her directly.
But now that the confetti has settled, Betsy and her team must get down to business. Some pressing cases are already piling up as the liquidity crisis that rippled across the UN last year is now sending roaring waves, with cutbacks and terminations allegedly crashing down in uneven patterns.
“Because of the liquidity crisis, people of color feel they’re being targeted,” Betsy explains. “The minority people are now feeling that they’re being let go first – we have two active cases. I will not mention the entity because this should be quite confidential, but that’s an area which management needs to be alerted on. And I already raised it last week with two Directors.”
Indeed, the liquidity crisis, as it mutates into an existential dilemma for the entire multilateral system, is likely to further complicate the work of Betsy and of the Staff Unions across the UN system, with executives having to take increasingly drastic measures just to keep core operations afloat.
“My team and I are also working on structured exit interviews and surveys to better understand the separations targeting under- and unrepresented countries or regional groups,” she notes.
We’ll reach out to Betsy in the near future, inshallah, and see where we’re all at.
*A shorter version of this feature appeared in UN Today’s hardcopy issue.