Independent consultant, innovator and startup manager of a unique think tank focused on management and performance issues in international organizations.
🤔 If you think you’re immune to unconscious bias, think again because you’re the product of your environment. This month’s ReformWorks research spotlight was a deeply personal one, in that it forced me to reflect on institutional structures in the #UN that reinforced my own #unconsciousbias. It’s based on some very thought provoking research by Kseniya Oksamytna and Sarah von Billerbeck which demonstrates very convincingly how UN peacekeeping and international organizations more generally are 'racialized'. 🔗 Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gsMzAs-j #Diversity #Equity #Inclusion
“….we, as a society, neglect the fact that organizational formation was partially created on the basis of excluding racially minoritized groups [and women] and should be analyzed as such.”
Katja, thank you for your insightful reflection and bringing attention to this vital topic. Unconscious bias truly shapes how we perceive and interact with the world, often reinforcing structures that perpetuate inequality. I find your connection between individual bias and institutional frameworks compelling. This research serves as an important reminder for organizations to introspect and actively address these biases at all levels. What steps do you think we can take to translate these findings into actionable change within peacekeeping frameworks and beyond?
Fabio Arditi
3w
Multiculturalism and real integration are a consequence of many virtuous factors as well as racism is a consequence of many vicious ones. And we all know that is much more difficult to dismantle vices than virtues. As world champions like Madiba, M. Luther King, Gandhi, Dalai Lama can confirm, the road is long, long and windy (the oldest may remember the song :) ... And in the UN it has just started. This is the 2 cents opinion of a humble UNV at his first (and probably last) mission: a perfect mr. nobody
Sonia Mrabet
3w
Just look at the composition of the security council and you get a lot of answers: we are not equal and let's stop pretending, double standards everywhere but we are progressing as an organization.
Nadia Desai
3w
I would add that the evaluation methods themselves are limited by unconscious bias of the evaluators as the approaches remain westernized. How can evaluations of historically marginalized people in organizations (or any context) be carried out fairly if the frameworks used to evaluate are those of the dominant systems?
Thank you for sharing, Katja Hemmerich.
Very informative. Many thanks Katja.
Multilateral Partnership Management | International Development | International Relations | Strategy & Policy | Negotiation | Mediation
3wThank you Katja Hemmerich for sharing this. When I started my work a long too ago in my early 20s in the UN system, white savorism was easy for me to identify. This also carried with it the weight of: I know more and better than you, while in reality, many of the international staff was ill equipped and thus at a disadvantage when dealing with the locals. Yet, because they were white, that wasn’t seen as negative factor against them. If anything, nobody questioned their lack in performance. And this also created the cycle that they didn’t see anything wrong with their work and behavior and further enforced their sense of superiority!!! A vicious cycle to break!!! I have myself faced this fact over and over as a woman from the South, who’s highly educated, knowledgeable and experienced when faced by people from the North, even though I’m an American too!!! My skin color (and hijab) are the first factors taken against me. It’s definitely embedded not just in racism, but as the article noted, it’s a continuum of colonialism. Indeed, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done amid the resistance, especially for humanitarian international organizations. There can be no true humanitarian work with embedded racism