For 8 years, he has been spokesman for the Secretary General of the UN, it is a bit like a permanent general assembly: 365 days a year, his “noon briefing”, the midday press conference, is followed in the 193 member countries. By the press, but also by diplomats, on the ground as well as on the floors of the UN. The contrast is also quite strange, because in front of his desk, on the other hand, it’s almost “family”with always the same accredited journalists.
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All know each other. By viewing the videos available online, we see Stéphane Dujarric distributing the floor. “Did you have another question, Mister Abani?” and in stride “Go Go! Cehlia, go ahead”, between two answers on sensitive subjects when he explained, for example, last April, that “the UN is trying to silence the guns in Ukraine, at least to allow humanitarian action”. Obviously, on a General Assembly noon like Tuesday, September 20, the “noon briefing” is more followed. But in the end, it doesn’t change much.
In general, each time Stéphane Dujarric opens his mouth, he takes the risk of seeing one of the 193 UN delegations fall on his back. He told it to the former RFI correspondent at the UN, Karim Lebhour, who had made the comic strip A season at the UN.. “What he told me every timenotes Karim Lebhour citing a discussion with Stéphane Dujarric is that “if we talk about Tibet, it is the Chinese who come screaming in my office. If it’s not Tibet, it’s Ukraine, Kashmir, Nagorno-Karabakh. You cannot imagine the number of diplomats who come to complain about our declarations. Working at the UN is like walking through a minefield. Everything is a matter of nuances, you have to weigh each word. And he tells me that he was with Kofi Annan once in Jerusalem, after an attack. Kofi Annan issued a statement saying that Palestinians and Israelis should work harder for peace. And it started a diplomatic storm. The Israelis accused us of establishing a moral equivalence with the terrorists. Our emissary in the Middle East was furious, he couldn’t go anywhere. “
Stéphane Dujarric is a very American Frenchman, born in Paris but who has practically always lived in the United States. His mother, writer and winner of the Goncourt Prize in 1996, Anka Muhlstein, took him to New York, when she remarried the American novelist Louis Begley. He did all his schooling there, up to Georgetown University in Washington, in Foreign Affairs. Aristocratic origins complete the profile: his name is actually Stéphane Dujarric de la Rivière, with Rothschilds in previous generations. So many connections, but not necessarily diplomats! And it was as a journalist, after nine years at ABC, that he was spotted and hired at the UN in 2000. Until in 2005, Kofi Annan made him his spokesperson for a year and a half. . A delicate period during which he notably manages the scandal “oil for food”. By taking over at the General Secretariat, the Korean Ban Ki Moon does without his services at first. Stéphane Dujarric then notably took care of the communication of the UNDP (the United Nations Development Programme) but we came back to look for him in 2014, when Ban Ki Moon’s term of office ended. And in the process, with Antonio Guterres. In this diplomatic world, the personality of the spokesperson is important. Proof that there can be a little room for fantasy. Just look at his Twitter account, especially his photo: he rubs his eyes, a way of emphasizing with a lot of humor that it’s still a headache.
A former UN correspondent had this expression: “Next to the cold hakes without mayonnaise, it was more like a party!” He is warmer, he comes by bike, after dropping his children off at school. He jokes about his constant lateness and sometimes pops up with a flowered tie taken from his coat rack, which has about twenty of them, at the entrance to his office. This does not prevent the elements of language, and sometimes a lot of tension in this press room. A year ago, a French journalist took it by surprise: “I learn that the UN for decades, at the request of the Chinese, gave names of dissidents to Beijing…” “This is absolutely false”, he replied, furious. A few days later, same question: but more nuanced answer: it was true, but that is no longer the case. Some see in it the particular harshness of Antonio Gutteres, the current Secretary General, who would put a lot of pressure on his troops and would leave them little freedom of speech. In any case, Stéphane Dujarric has been holding for eight years. In itself, this is already an achievement!