One Year Later: The International Rescue Committee “exonerates” itself from White Supremacy Culture.
In 2020, Serwah Asante, a former employee of the International Rescue Committee, a global refugee resettlement organization, experienced repeated marginalization, intimidation, and bullying by top IRC officials (David Miliband, President and CEO; Ricardo Castro, former General Counsel; Madlin Sadler, Chief Operating Officer; Brian Johnson, Chief Human Resources Officer) during her work to enhance racial equity initiatives in the organization. Asante experienced a range of white supremacist characteristics as a former Grants Manager including power hoarding by white leadership, paternalistic demands by white colleagues, micro and macro aggressions in public meetings, gas lighting, and white defensiveness when BIPOC staff raised concerns about internal policies and practices. After 15 months of ongoing harassment and misconduct, Asante filed a 30-page complaint through the UK’s Foreign Commonwealth & Development Organization’s (FCDO) Investigation Unit. FCDO does not have jurisdiction to investigate matters, but heard the complaint over the course of several months and submitted the report along with a request that the accusations of white supremacy culture, racism, and bullying be fully investigated.
In June 2021, in response to Asante’s complaint, a representative of the IRC Ethics Division confirmed that the IRC Board of Directors had formed a Special Committee composed of Timothy Geithner, Sally Susman, Mona Sutphen, and Eric Tokat. The Special Committee then hired the law firm WilmerHale to conduct a third-party, external investigation into the claims presented. When IRC staff researched the background of WilmerHale, they were shocked to discover a history of union busting activities and a leadership circle woefully devoid of racial diversity (Fahey 2011; Segal, 1999). When numerous IRC staff questioned the appropriateness and capacity of WilmerHale to investigate Asante’s complaint, centered on white supremacy culture, they were told by WilmerHale lawyers that they could not provide any responses as to how the organization was addressing its own culture of inequity. Additional emails to the IRC Board of Directors and Special Committee from IRC staff asking about the capacity of WilmerHale to adequately investigate white supremacy culture and bullying at IRC went unanswered.
On July 25, 2021, as continued proof of rampant bullying and an abject failure to confront its own legacy of white supremacy, Asante and select members of the GARD (Global Anti-Racism and Decoloniality) network, an employee advocacy group, received a threatening email from a Gmail account entitled, “Friend of IRC GARD” stating the following:
To a small, toxic division of GARD,
Yes division, meaning dividing.
We are looking forward to the day when a self-important minority of GARD colleagues spend as much time and donor funds focusing on our beneficiaries in the harshest places around the world instead of blogging, posting, surveying and attacking to make themselves feel progressive.
Go ahead and post your salaries. We’ll post photos of the Taliban.
Every donor you drive away is one more sick or dying beneficiary we could not save.
Spend even a moment of time on Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Yemen, or Columbia where IRC staff are dying so you can play activist. Can you even find Kakuma on a map?
White Supremacy and Global North Colonialism is when whites with Ivy degrees tell black and brown colleagues what is best for them. You aren’t allies, you are selfish hypocrites.
You are all working at the wrong non-profit charitable organization. We are here to save lives, not ruin them.
Why are we anonymous?
We are not interested in being attacked by GARD or being told that we show white and our skin is not dark enough. We are not interested in being driven out because we love the IRC, it’s history and our mission.
Look at yourself very hard in the mirror, you should be ashamed.
Starting on Monday bring people together, not push them apart.
“We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” — MLK
< From a GARD majority
The anonymous email was reported to IRC’s HR and Ethics and Compliance Unit, but no follow-up action was taken to safeguard GARD members from ongoing bullying and harassment.
Over the course of nine months, WilmerHale investigators reviewed internal IRC policies and procedures related to workplace harassment and discrimination. They also assessed the efficacy of IRC’s current Ethics and Compliance Unit and evaluated IRC’s Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion Strategy. WilmerHale interviewed over 130 current and former employees for feedback on their experience working for the international organization.
In March 2022, after countless billable hours, WilmerHale “produced” a brief, six-page summary report that concluded IRC does not have a “pervasive white supremacy culture” as alleged in Asante’s complaint. WilmerHale also deemed the allegations against the four senior IRC leaders to be unsubstantiated and that there was not a culture of fear, bullying, intimidation, and retaliation on the basis of race in the organization. They recommended IRC continue to increase diversity, equality, and inclusivity (DEI) initiatives across the organization, improve internal workplace reporting channels and policies, and implement more DEI and management training to staff. It is important to note that WilmerHale representatives confirmed that they would issue their full report to the IRC Board’s Special Committee as this was their client. WilmerHale also could not guarantee or substantiate that any report findings shared by the Special Committee to IRC staff were actually reflective of their own conclusions.
A few hours after receiving the communication from the Special Committee, staff received an email from CEO David Miliband in which he claimed that it is “important that the charges of white supremacy against the organization and named individuals have been reviewed and discovered to be unfounded”. In other words, IRC Leadership was validated in their belief that the organization does not suffer from a culture of white supremacy. Staff across the organization expressed frustration, shock, and anger at the flippant nature in which the report was shared and its dismissal of credible accusations made by staff. There was widespread confusion about how the six page document could be accepted as a comprehensive “report.”
Staff across the IRC network wrote numerous internal blog posts denouncing the findings of the report and calling out the shortcomings of the investigation. The blog posts shared common themes such as direct call outs to IRC Leadership Board that the findings of the report were not substantiated by data-driven evidence, the definition and benchmarks of white supremacy behavior and action were not clearly and appropriately defined, and the tone and brevity of the report clearly indicated that the real purpose of the report was to exonerate IRC of its obvious culture of white supremacy. Several staff members who were interviewed by the investigators also expressed dissatisfaction, citing that their stories and experiences related to harassment, discrimination, and bullying were not included in the report’s findings.
As of July 2022, Asante has not received any follow-up from the IRC of the outcome of the WilmerHale investigation. The conclusions of the WilmerHale report signal to BIPOC and PGM staff in the IRC network that their lived experiences of harassment and discrimination will not be believed or taken seriously by IRC Leadership. By not taking accountability for their actions, IRC Leadership continues to perpetuate a culture of fear, discrimination, and retaliation within its network as well as uphold racist systems and practices within the humanitarian aid sector.
