Stephane Dujarric | A trapeze without a net: the life of the UN Spokesperson (S12-E2)

 

 

[00:00:00] Melissa Fleming

My guest this week is a passionate believer in the United Nations and the importance of international dialogue and cooperation. And every day, his job is to communicate what the UN does.

 

[00:00:13] Stéphane Dujarric

There is no way we can move forward in this world without multilateralism, without an organization like this one. It's like a plant, right? It needs to be watered. We can't let it wither away.

 

[00:00:33] Melissa Fleming

Stéphane Dujarric is the Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres. From the United Nations, I'm Melissa Fleming. This is Awake at Night. Welcome Stéphane.

 

[00:00:53] Stéphane Dujarric

Melissa, thank you. Thanks for having me.

 

[00:00:55] Melissa Fleming

Some people call you Steph, including me. Which do you prefer?

 

[00:00:58] Stéphane Dujarric

That's fine. Either one.

 

[00:00:59] Melissa Fleming

Either one?

 

[00:01:00] Stéphane Dujarric

Yeah, either one. Steph is fine. Steph is better.

 

[00:01:02] Melissa Fleming

Okay. You and I both know the challenges and the stresses and perhaps even the exhilaration of being a spokesperson – but I wanted to ask you first of all to explain very simply what it is that you do day in, day out.

 

[00:01:17] Stéphane Dujarric

My main job is to be the point of contact between the global media, and especially the media accredited to the UN, and the Secretary-General and the UN writ large. The way I like to say it is that you run the strategic communications department, I run the tactical communications department, right? And it's about ensuring that what we do today enables us to be around tomorrow, right? And we let others think about the long term, where they're doing the short term.

 

[00:01:51] Melissa Fleming

It enables us to be around tomorrow because?

 

[00:01:55] Stéphane Dujarric

Well, because we react in the way that we're supposed to react to the news. We talk a lot and put forward everything that the UN does. And, you know, one of the things we do with the briefing is to ensure that we give a platform to all our colleagues in the field – all our colleagues in the agencies, in the front-line agencies – to talk about what the World Food Programme does in in Haiti, what UNHCR does in Kenya, what IOM does in Libya, just to ensure that those stories aren't forgotten and that people get a sense of the breadth of everything the UN does, day in and day out.

 

[00:02:34] Melissa Fleming

Right, because, I mean, the UN press corps is based here. This is a press corps that is dedicated to the United Nations, that is for the most part, actually even housed within the building. Many of them have offices, and you have a briefing every day at 12 noon. There are so many possible topics – I guess you have to come up with, like, what am I going to say to them today? How do you even begin to prepare?

 

[00:03:01] Stéphane Dujarric

Well, part of it is finding that balance between what we want to talk about – you know, what the Secretary-General is doing, what the UN is doing – and to be able to respond to the questions of what they want to talk about. So, what we're trying to do is, really, I would say, almost build a newscast, right? We have to figure out – myself, my deputy, Farhan Haq, all the great, the great people I have on my team, Stephanie, Shirin, Daniela, they're all, I mean, I love them all because they're all, they work, all work so, so hard – is to figure out, like, what are we going to lead with? Right? What's today's top news?

And so up until the very last minute, we try to figure out what items we're going to lead with, what we're going to put towards the tail end, the more feature-ish items, and then we go ahead and do the briefing.

 

[00:03:54] Melissa Fleming

Because, I mean, you are leading the agenda with this briefing. I know that you spend a lot of time early in the morning, looking at what the news contains all over the world. Can you just describe how you start your day?

 

[00:04:07] Stéphane Dujarric

So and not just me – my colleagues, we all, some of them, start their day around five, I start mine around six. We put together a 20-page news summary of headlines – our most important reader is the Secretary-General, but it's obviously shared throughout the UN system – and it's looking at the events that we think are interesting to him, and looking at them from different points of view.

So the section about what is going on in Gaza has Israeli and Arab sources. The section about the war in Ukraine has Russian and Ukrainian and Western sources, or Arab sources. So we see how different parts of the world are looking at the event. And it's a critical product for him, because he gets to see what's going on. But also for us, because we start to get a sense from five o'clock in the morning onwards, what are the questions we're going to get? What are the journalists interested in, right? And so it helps us prepare for the briefing.

And I go to the briefing with, you know, about 10 or 15 items I'm going to read out, and then a huge binder, which has a big label, says it's a book of answers, and it has political guidance on everything that may come up in the briefing. So part of it is also a guessing game – like, what are we going to be asked, and are we ready to answer it? And are we willing to answer it?

 

 

[00:05:36] Melissa Fleming

It's incredibly challenging, because you have to anticipate questions from all over the world. The press corps has journalists who represent every corner of the earth, right?

 

[00:05:48] Stéphane Dujarric

Yeah. I mean, the press corps could technically represent every country in the UN. It doesn't, but it clearly represents every region – though we are underrepresented in terms of African media, which is a shame, but it has journalists from all over the world. The press corps here, by and large, is very well informed, so we have to be prepared. They're very professional. They know what they're doing. They ask tough questions, which is fine, but we just have to be ready every day to answer their questions.

 

[00:06:18] Melissa Fleming

Do you ever get stage fright?

 

[00:06:21] Stéphane Dujarric

Oh, all the time.

 

[00:06:22] Melissa Fleming

All the time?

 

[00:06:23] Stéphane Dujarric

All the time. I'm very relaxed, a little too relaxed. Much too relaxed, up until just about 12. And I'm looking at what's being prepared, and then all of a sudden I start walking towards the podium, and I realize all the things I had thought about at 6:30 in the morning that I forgot to follow up with. And so I spent most of the briefing at the podium thinking like, “Please don't ask me about this. Please don't ask me about this.” Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

 

[00:06:54] Melissa Fleming

Because it is live broadcast.

 

[00:06:57] Stéphane Dujarric

Yeah, I mean, it's sometimes that, you know, if it is a big news day, some broadcasters will take it live, but it's on the webcast, right? And it's trapeze without a net, in a sense, because you're representing a person, António Guterres, you're representing the Secretary-General, you're representing the UN as a whole. And you have to be prepared, and sometimes you don't have the answer.

 

[00:07:24] Melissa Fleming

And what do you say when you don't have the answer?

 

[00:07:26] Stéphane Dujarric

Well, you know, as I tell people, the choice is between looking stupid and saying something stupid. Our reflex, I think, when people ask us questions, is to try to guess. This is not a place where you guess. So you have to fight your instinct to try to guess the answer. Because if you get it wrong, you take a whole organization with you, right?

It can have an impact on a mediation effort. It can have an impact on a humanitarian situation. If you don't know, then it was you just look unprepared and you look stupid. And that's what you have to do. If you don't know, you have to say you don't know, and just say, I'll get back to them. But the guessing game is a very dangerous one, and I don't always listen to my inner voice to say, don't guess.

 

[00:08:12] Melissa Fleming

You say, “I don't know.”

 

[00:08:14] Stéphane Dujarric

Well, sometimes my answer should be, “I don't know.” Sometimes, I guess. And sometimes it's not always right.

 

[00:08:21] Melissa Fleming

But you can say, “I will get back to you.”

 

[00:08:23] Stéphane Dujarric

Yeah, so, and, you know, we get back to them. And I think, our door is always open to the journalist, right? They don't need to make an appointment. They come in and out of our offices all the time, because the briefing is only one part of our interaction with them. They come in, they'll ask us questions on stories they're working on exclusively. They'll want some guidance off the record, on the record. And so we're there for them, right? We're a service office. We have to be physically close to the journalists, and that's very important to me.

 

 

[00:08:59] Melissa Fleming

Why is it so important to facilitate the work of journalists?

 

[00:09:02] Stéphane Dujarric

They tell the UN story, right? We can tell our own story through social media, and we do – I know you run it and you do it very well. We do it through the UN News center, but having somebody else tell our story is critical.

And the other thing is, let's be honest, we're a publicly funded institution. We need to be held to account. And one of the ways we're held to account – any institution is held to account – is through interaction with the media and putting yourself out there.

 

[00:09:36] Melissa Fleming

I heard that you still read physical newspapers. Why is that?

 

[00:09:42] Stéphane Dujarric

Well, I read, I still read the New York Times, but I read it at night. Because I like the feel of the newspaper. I really like that. And also, I find when you read a physical newspaper, you discover stories that you wouldn't otherwise see, right? I mean, when you look at them on the web, you're looking for stuff that's of interest to you. And I usually try to keep a magazine in my back pocket to read if I'm just waiting at a bus stop or if I'm not on my bike, and just to have something to read. And I don't like to do the crossword on a screen. I like to do it on paper.

 

[00:10:19] Melissa Fleming

You told me recently that sometimes – because you start really early – and sometimes you were able to escape at like five or six, and it's still nice out in the summer, and you meet your wife in the park?

 

[00:10:31] Stéphane Dujarric

Yeah, sometimes we'll go. I mean, we're empty nesters now, so sometimes we'll just, we'll meet up, we'll take a walk with the dog and sit outside and read as a way to decompress. But you know, the positive sign of the iPhone culture that we live in is that, you know, people can reach you all the time, so if I'm not in the office, I'm reachable.

 

[00:10:53] Melissa Fleming

But actually, you told me something that impressed me, was that you weren't reading on your iPhone in the park. You were reading something else.

 

[00:10:58] Stéphane Dujarric

No, I read a physical book. Yeah, it's important.

 

[00:11:03] Melissa Fleming

You have done this job for many years. What do you like about it? What excites you about it?

 

 

[00:11:10] Stéphane Dujarric

You know, I think we should all be blessed by having jobs that fit our personalities. And this is a job for someone with a very short attention span, and I have an extremely short attention span. And I'm pretty lazy, and I'm a procrastinator. So every day, I have no choice but to be ready at noon, right? Every day, there are very set times during the day where I have to do certain things. If you gave me a project to do over six months, I would literally go to the movies for five months and four weeks and start working on it at the end.

So you know, like you, my first professional jobs were in journalism, and so we are journalists, right? The job that I do is an in-house journalist, because to get ready for the briefing, myself and my colleagues in my office, we are journalists. We try to get answers from an organization, like most bureaucracies, that would rather not speak. And we annoy people. We bug them. We call our colleagues at the desks and at different departments, like, “What can we say? What can we say?”

Yeah, we annoy people. I mean, I've no doubt that we annoy a lot of our colleagues. But that's our aggressive journalist hat on, and then at 12, we take the journalist's hat off, and then we start answering questions. But we can't answer questions without the information,

 

[00:12:41] Melissa Fleming

So you're actually like an investigative journalist in your own house?

 

[00:12:45] Stéphane Dujarric

Exactly. And because we know people, you know when – and sometimes we're given official lines – but we, I think you know, especially Farhan and I, have been at the UN for, I think, more than 50 years combined. So we know a lot of people. So we often, we have back channels to get information. We would never use that information on the record, but it helps us to get on the record and lines that we can use.

I'd have to say that we are very fortunate to work with this Secretary-General who is very attuned to the needs of the media. And so when I need something that nobody else is providing or nobody else can provide, I will go to him and he will always tell me, you can say this or this is going on, but you can't say it. And I think the trust of being able to know what to say and what not to say, to know what's going on above the waterline and beneath the waterline is critical. Because if you're only told as a spokesperson what you can say in answering your questions, you may say something inadvertently that you shouldn't have been saying. So you need to have the whole picture. And I think you have to be trusted.

 

[00:14:06] Melissa Fleming

Building internal trust is absolutely essential, and in many of our functions it takes a lot of time to build this up. They don't understand, necessarily the need to speak. So how much of your time do you spend actually trying to gather the information on what to know and what you can say?

 

[00:14:28] Stéphane Dujarric

I think it's about 60% of the time is news gathering, and the rest is news reading, one way or another. But it's, a lot of the time is just trying to find out what's going on. And there are crises that happens and all of a sudden, you have to become an expert in this particular crisis very quickly. You know, in a sense, first, a spokesperson has to know little about a lot, right? We have to have the ability to answer two or three questions on just every topic before finding a specialist who can answer more.

 

 

[00:15:01] Melissa Fleming

The job of the press is to be skeptical – and these days we're seeing an increasingly polarized mood. Is it getting in any way more hostile towards you?

 

[00:15:13] Stéphane Dujarric

It's not, I mean, not really. I mean, I think we're blessed to have a press corps that is adversarial, but not aggressive, right? Emotions sometimes run high in the briefing room, because you have journalists from different sides of a conflict, and they often speak to each other through me, right? And so you have to just kind of find a way to lower the temperature, but also recognizing their anguish, their pain and their worry about their homelands. We've been fortunate, I think so, you know, knock on wood to escape a lot of the aggressive attacks, personal attacks, that we've seen other institutions suffer from.

 

[00:16:07] Melissa Fleming

And yet some of our leaders have been subject to a lot of personal attack. I mean, and you are out there on the record, and where a lot of this hostility is happening is on social media.

 

[00:16:20] Stéphane Dujarric

I've closed down my personal Twitter account about two years ago because there was a lot of just silly hate, and I realized, like I didn't get anything out of it. It just increased my aggravation and my anxiety. So we have our professional account, the UN Spokespersons account. I had a personal Instagram account, which I deleted.

Now, the only Instagram account I have is my dog’s. So I curate my dog's Instagram account, you know, her going about her life in New York and, you know, chasing lions on the Upper East Side. So, you know, and Facebook is really just friends, and LinkedIn remains a professional, you know, less aggressive place to do to do business. But at the end of the day, I didn't need my own Twitter account. I didn't need my own Instagram account. It really, it just didn't serve any purpose.

 

[00:17:13] Melissa Fleming

Yeah, and you fielded yourself.

 

[00:17:14] Stéphane Dujarric

Yeah.

 

[00:17:15] Melissa Fleming

I'm aware that the Western media is very interested in Ukraine and Gaza for example, but other conflicts like the appalling war in Sudan or the crises in the Democratic Republic of Congo or in Myanmar are all but forgotten or maybe even neglected. Does that frustrate you?

 

[00:17:33] Stéphane Dujarric

100%. And I think one of the things we do at the briefing is to ensure that those stories that are not covered enough are told. Whether it's Haiti, Sudan, Myanmar, as you mentioned. There are still, in terms of the Western media, there are a couple of journalists that cover Haiti really well, right? There are a couple that are interested in the Sudan, but in the world that we live in, it's very hard to break through, past the Middle East and past Ukraine.

But that doesn't mean that we can't talk about it. And we do talk about it. I mean, if you think about Haiti, which is, you know, just off the coast of Florida, right? And the appalling things that are going on there, and then the suffering of people being brutalized by criminal gangs. We have to talk about it, because we're sort of the storytellers of last resort. If we don't tell those stories, who's going to?

 

[00:18:35] Melissa Fleming

Does it frustrate you if you tell those stories, though, when they don't really get picked up?

 

[00:18:40] Stéphane Dujarric

I look at it a different way. I'm happy when those stories get a little pickup, and the little pickup that they would not have otherwise gotten if we hadn't mentioned it. I'm also very cognizant of the fact that there is no money left in journalism, that it's expensive to cover these things, and that the political situation in this country, and frankly, a lot of Western European countries, and Ukraine and Russia just takes up all the oxygen. But we have to keep telling those stories.

 

[00:19:17] Melissa Fleming

Is there a kind of technique that you use that you find works best, I mean, or do you just put out the facts?

 

[00:19:26] Stéphane Dujarric

I try to do it as factually as possible. When I read it, I try to put emotion into it, right? And I think of those people, right? I will never use the acronym IDP, for internally displaced persons, right? I will say, you know, 50,000 human beings were forced to move, or 50,000 men, women and children, right? I try to individualize those numbers in my head, and I hope it comes through in my voice, because we get so numb to those numbers so quickly.

 

[00:20:07] Melissa Fleming

Behavioral Science actually confirms that – in fact, there's one social scientist who's concluded, the more who die, the less we care, and actually we're only able to respond to stories of one.

Do you, you know, how do you deal with all of the tragedy that you take in when you're doing your research on a day to day, you're talking to colleagues, you're getting the back story, you'll be on the phone to colleagues in Gaza or in Sudan or in Haiti, and they'll be describing the death and the destruction and the hunger, and you're taking that in, and you have to then translate it. How do you deal with this yourself?

 

[00:20:50] Stéphane Dujarric

I think in a way, it's very useful for me to talk to them, and often, when there is a crisis, I will try to talk to somebody in the region before the briefing, because I can feel the emotion in their voice, I can hear the details. And even if I can't say everything they're telling me, it helps, in a sense, with my delivery and with the message I'm trying to go through.

But most importantly, I think it helps me with my motivation, right? With like, keep going, that I'm sitting in New York rather comfortably, and they're not. And so I have, you know, myself and my team, we have to work twice as hard to tell their story.

 

[00:21:29] Melissa Fleming

What keeps you awake at night?

 

[00:21:32] Stéphane Dujarric

On a daily bit, my to do list. Because I'm a procrastinator. So I have lists, and I never cross things off. And it's just, it keeps growing, and I just, it's my personal and my professional to do lists are very long.

I think what also keeps me up at night is the cruelty that we're seeing all over the world, in rich countries, in poor countries, in countries at peace and in countries at war. And the ease at which this cruelty is meted out. And that's so painful, because I think, you know, you and I have traveled all over the world, and we've seen tragedies, but you've also seen the kindness in those places, right? The sacrifice and the generosity of people who often can least afford to be generous, right? And the ones who most afford can be generous are often the most cruel.

 

[00:22:35] Melissa Fleming

I just got this picture in my head when we met. I was still at UNHCR, and you were, you were in this job, and we met at the Cox's Bazar refugee camp in Myanmar with all the Rohingya refugees. What do you remember from that? What struck you?

 

 

[00:22:51] Stéphane Dujarric

Yeah, the overwhelming aspect of it. Of just this sea of human beings, and each one of them with a story, right? Each one of them with pain, each one of them uprooted. And frankly, you and I know that the hope of ever going home is so remote. It is so remote. And you know, Bangladesh opened their door to them, a country that has its own problems and its own challenges, whether it's on all sorts of levels, but at the end of the day, they welcome them. And we all know that many, many rich countries would find it very, very difficult, if not impossible, to do that.

 

[00:23:44] Melissa Fleming

One of the big stories that, I know, has pained us both to report on, has been the cuts to our humanitarian organizations. I mean, very massive, dramatic cuts, resulting in thousands and thousands of colleagues being laid off, but also with implications that are disastrous and even could result in death for millions of people that they serve. How does, how has that made you feel?

 

[00:24:20] Stéphane Dujarric

Again, I mean, I think you could be angry, and I think we are angry, but it just, it should motivate us more to do our work. And, you know, being angry is not very productive, right? Being motivated, even if you're motivated kind of by anger, is a better way of dealing with it, right? And talking more about what we do and, you know, trying to get more and more people interested in what we do, and trying to get the people who have the money to be interested. The money is not where it used to be, but it's not like the money's not there anymore.

 

[00:24:53] Melissa Fleming

Yeah, so making that case I know is, I know is part of your job. The biggest story in the last two years has been the horrific attacks by Hamas on Israel, and then the following war in Gaza. And I don't think there was a day at your noon briefing where you didn't have to touch on that. How much of a strain has that been for you? Because there was, as you mentioned before, there were journalists with very passionate views and also divisive views on both sides asking you questions.

 

[00:25:32] Stéphane Dujarric

Again, it's about ensuring that we are not numb to what is what is going on, to remember that you know the scale of suffering on each side is different, but it doesn't mean there's not suffering on each side. And I think what's been painful is to realize, every day that the war went on in in Gaza, that the hostages weren't released, moved us further and further away from what we all hope will be, at some point, a two-state solution. And so, it just, you know it's not only the immediate suffering, but it's the extension of the long-term instability and the long-term suffering. Plus, you know, all our colleagues who are in Gaza, right? Our Palestinian colleagues, our international colleagues who are going in and out of Gaza, and speaking to them regularly, hearing from them what they were going through.

The thing is, what I often tell people, the unique thing about working at the UN is that whenever you're dealing with any crisis, in any meeting there are people who are directly impacted by that crisis, right? So, whether it's Israel and Gaza, the war in Ukraine, Sudan, you very quickly know people who are Israelis, Sudanese, Palestinians, Ukrainians, Russians. And you get this amazing personal insight from them about what it's like, right? So, it's not a theoretical, you really understand it better, really.

And I think the, you know, seeing the pain of our Palestinian colleagues, the pain of our Israeli colleagues, and just ensuring that, on a professional level, on a personal level, you reached out to them, right? And you talk to them and you listen to them and say, you know, we're thinking of you, right? And I think that's, in a sense, what makes working in this building very special.

 

[00:27:41] Melissa Fleming

I mean, you've had to announce a couple of times, or many occasions – way too many occasions – that colleagues had died, colleagues have been kidnapped.

 

[00:27:51] Stéphane Dujarric

I remember the bombing of the Canal Hotel in Baghdad in 2003, and I think those of us of a certain generation of the UN all had friends who died. And what is not often told there are a lot of, I mean, there are a handful of people in this building who are working here in this building, who survived the bombing and who continue to work, who came back and worked at the UN. I have a colleague, and she was, you know, she survived the bombing. Five years later, she went back to Iraq to work. And so those, you know, I'm so cognizant of our colleagues who take these risks.

And I remember going with Ban Ki-moon in 2015, I think, 2014, to Algiers, after the UN office there was blown to smithereens and walking around the rubble. I remember seeing a highlighter in the rubble, and you're thinking, like, somebody was sitting at that desk, and using it. And then meeting with the families. So to me, it's always very painful and moving to announce these things and what angers me is then when people label us as you know, corrupt, lazy, terrorists or whatever.

 

 

[00:29:14] Melissa Fleming

Or recently, a Fox News commentator called for the bombing of the UN. You were, I've never seen you look so mad.

 

[00:29:23] Stéphane Dujarric

Yeah, I was mad because it's like, give me a break, right? I mean, it's like, these are human beings, and it goes back to the cruelty comment, right? I mean, it's just like, are we now in a world where, you know, on a major network in the U.S., you're just like, yeah, just bomb this building in New York City, right, where there are Fox News reporters sitting as well? So, I mean, it's just, it's these offhanded comments about violence and force, which are very painful to deal with.

 

[00:29:56] Melissa Fleming

And you've been working with António Guterres for nine years. You very often travel with him. Is there a visit that has really stuck with you?

 

[00:30:07] Stéphane Dujarric

I mean, it's one of the privileges of the jobs that we've done, and when you did it with him and with Mohamed ElBaradei, to get to see all these places, right, and to meet all these colleagues. The visit that has always stuck with me is in 2017, we went to Israel, and then we went to Gaza. And António Guterres, when he travels, he's not really interested in getting briefings from a lot of UN colleagues. So he basically asked – we went to an UNRWA school – and he asked the local UN people, “I want to speak to six mothers”. And it was him and six mothers, and he just wanted to hear their stories about what we could do, what we could do better, what, you know, what do you need? And you know, this was in Gaza. It could have been anywhere else.

And all these stories were heartbreaking. And one woman needed a transplant. And at the end of the meeting, he thanked them. He spent about an hour and a half with them. He turned to the UN rep in Gaza, goes, you have to make sure to help this person. And on the way out, he walked out with me, and he turned to me and he goes, “How can we be expected to help millions if we can't help one?” And that's always stuck with me, and I found that very, very motivating and very useful in kind of going forward.

 

[00:31:29] Melissa Fleming

It's a familiar story to me. And I'm sure he made a phone call after to make sure the woman got her transplant.

 

[00:31:36] Stéphane Dujarric

Yes, exactly, yeah.

 

[00:31:40] Melissa Fleming

What made you interested in international affairs in the first place?

 

 

[00:31:44] Stéphane Dujarric

I mean, I went, you know, I came to, I'm born in France. I came to the U.S. when I was nine. I had no real links to the UN, but my mother put my brother and myself in the UN school, which is down the road from here, because it was a great place to learn English. So through osmosis, in a sense, you know, I grew up in a UN atmosphere.

 

[00:32:07] Melissa Fleming

Why did she choose the UN school?

 

[00:32:09] Stéphane Dujarric

But it was, they had a great English as a Second Language Program. So it was just very intensive way of learning English, and it had great French programs, so I could keep up the French. So, you know, a lot of my friends turned out to be children of UN staffers and of diplomats, and we had our graduation in the General Assembly Hall. So, I mean, it kind of put the UN in my in my bloodstream.

And then I went to university here in the U.S., studied international relations. Didn't really know what to do after graduation, went back to France, did my military service for about a year and a half, and then got a job at ABC News in Paris, and worked with them in Paris and then London and New York. But while I was working for them as a producer, basically covering a lot of conflict, so spending time in eastern Congo, in Bosnia, a couple of times, in Somalia. So just seeing conflict from the journalistic point of view, and also getting to see what the UN was doing, right. Meeting UN people, UN spokespeople, and just kind of thinking that's looks kind of like a fun and interesting place to be.

And in ‘99 a colleague of mine, who was off air reporter for ABC here, said, oh, there's a job opening in the spokesman's office. They're looking at somebody who has TV experience and who speaks French. I'm like, okay, I'll apply. And Fred hired me.

 

[00:33:42] Melissa Fleming

I want to hear a little bit more about your family in France. Like, where did you grow up? And I understand that your family background has had a lot of influence on you.

 

[00:33:55] Stéphane Dujarric

Yeah. So both my parents – my dad passed away a while ago – but both are French. My mother came to the U.S. in 1940, she's Jewish. Her family is Jewish, and they left – her father had been a Polish diplomat in Paris, and they left basically just ahead of the Nazis, and through Bordeaux and then Spain and Portugal.

They were able to leave because of the courage of two diplomats, one Spanish diplomat, Propper de Callejón, who was the Spanish consul in Bordeaux and was giving out as many visas to Spain, to refugees and especially to Jews. And the other one was the Portuguese diplomat, Sousa Mendes, who also gave visas. And those two kind of courageous bureaucrats, diplomats, paid for their courage with their career. Their career suffered after that. But they chose to help, while we know that so many others in so many other settings choose not to help.

 

[00:35:11] Melissa Fleming

I think it's one of those untold stories. I've heard about it, and I know that Israel has recognized these diplomats as righteous.

 

[00:35:21] Stéphane Dujarric

And they chose to help. Now, the Spanish consul had married into my mother's family, so there was a family connection there, but Sousa Mendes was the Portuguese representative in Bordeaux, because the French government had moved to Bordeaux by then. And what was very moving is that a few years ago, there was a celebration of Sousa Mendes here at the UN, because obviously our Secretary-General is Portuguese, and my mother came as one of the descendants of the people that were helped by this brave Portuguese diplomat.

 

[00:35:57] Melissa Fleming

Have you told the Secretary-General?

 

[00:35:58] Stéphane Dujarric

Yes. No, he knows. He knows. And he referenced me in his remarks there, that because of the bravery of this diplomat, this young girl, that my mother was, was able to get a visa, and then her son now works for him.

But I keep on my desk, I keep a color photocopy of my grandmother's from my father's side, her identity card issued by the French government in 1942. She was Jewish as well. And on her identity card, it's given out by the Prefecture in Périgueux, in the southwest of France, there's a big red stamp that says, “Juive” – Jewess. And she, by some other miracle, survived and was saved by the church and survived the war. But I think of that bureaucrat who issued her that identity card as the kind of counterpoint to Propper and Sousa, who had – he or she, I don't know if it was a man or a woman – had a stamp on their on their desk, and just the mere action of putting that stamp on that card probably condemned a person to death. And they didn't have to, but they did, right? And so we all have choices, regardless of what we do, where we work, and I think especially those of us who work for the UN all have choices, and we just always have to choose the right path.

 

[00:37:31] Melissa Fleming

It sounds like that memory of your grandmother and her identity card with that label, with that stamp, has perhaps shaped you?

 

[00:37:41] Stéphane Dujarric

I don't know if it's shaped me, because it's interesting, I only discovered this card about six years ago. My father died, my father's papers. So it serves me as a, it really serves as a reminder to me.

 

[00:38:00] Melissa Fleming

This job must be really stressful. How do you relax?

 

[00:38:04] Stéphane Dujarric

I think, you know, having the ability to shut off, which I kind of do, and watch stupid series on television, travel with my family, my children, my wife. You know, you have to be able to shut off, because otherwise you just cannot go, go on like that.

 

[00:38:29] Melissa Fleming

The United Nations is under, in some sectors, it's under attack. I mean, it's also getting waves of support from other corners. People are questioning multilateralism. Are you at all optimistic about its future?

 

[00:38:50] Stéphane Dujarric

You know, as you would know, if António Guterres were here, he'd say, he'd quote Jean Monnet, “I'm neither optimistic nor pessimistic, I'm determined.” And I think we have to be determined to go on with nerves of steel.

There is no way we can move forward in this world without multilateralism, without an organization like this one. I think what frustrates me is that it is not defended enough by the member states, right? And I think there's a little too much “a la carte” support. This is their organization.

I mean, we all know the Secretary-General has very little authority. Has very little power. He has moral authority. He has a bully pulpit, but at the end of the day, the Member States need to, kind of blow air into the UN balloon, because otherwise it just deflates. And you could not reinvent the organization today. It's like a plant, right? It needs to be watered. We can't let it wither away.

 

[00:39:59] Melissa Fleming

What would you say to young people considering a career in public or international service?

 

[00:40:05] Stéphane Dujarric

Do it, right? I mean, it'll demand a lot of sacrifice, but it's still, to this day, it remains an immensely motivating place. It's an amazing place, I think, especially for young people to start out and take risks and discover the world, whether they stay here or not, you know, for a longer time is – I think now it's a different, different world in terms of people seeing one place for a long time, but it's an amazing place to start out.

 

[00:40:32] Melissa Fleming

Yeah, it's gratifying to be serving humanity

 

[00:40:36] Stéphane Dujarric

Exactly.

 

[00:40:37] Melissa Fleming

Thank you. Stéphane.

 

[00:40:38] Stéphane Dujarric

Melissa, thank you.

 

[00:40:42]Melissa Fleming

Thank you for listening to Awake at Night. We'll be back soon with more incredible and inspiring stories from people working against huge challenges to make this world a better and more peaceful place.

To find out more about the series and the extraordinary people featured, do visit un.org/awake-at-night. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and please take the time to review us. It helps more people to find the show. 

Thanks to my editor Bethany Bell and to my colleagues at the UN: Katerina Kitidi, Roberta Politi, Julie James-Poplawski, Eric Justin Balgley, Benji Candelario, Jason Candler, Abby Vardeleon, Alison Corbet, Laura Rodriguez de Castro, Anzhelika Devis, Tulin Battikhi and Bissera Kostova. The original music for this podcast was written and performed by Nadine Shah and produced by Ben Hillier.