LONDON: A former top UN food agency official has said he was fired last week after highlighting Gaza’s hunger crisis, as he launched an appeal against the dismissal, The Guardian reported.

The leadership of the Food and Agriculture Organization had refused to renew Benjamin Davis’ contract as chief of its rural transformation and gender equality division because his team had published a brief on hunger in Gaza and held a seminar on the subject last year, the 62-year-old Spanish American dual citizen alleged.

Davis, who has worked for 26 years at the agency, also attributed the firing to his participation in weekly “moment of silence” vigils on FAO grounds for those killed in Gaza.

The Gaza seminar last September led to a complaint from Israel’s mission to the FAO.

Tel Aviv also sent a diplomat to take photos of FAO staff taking part in a moment of silence last October, an internal staff report showed.

A video of Davis leaving the agency’s Rome headquarters last week shows the veteran official surrounded by staff standing and applauding.

He said: “It’s a nice feeling that I’m not alone, that other people are behind me in this. I was stopped constantly in the hallways by people, even those that I didn’t know, just to shake my hand or just to thank me or just to say that they supported me or that they were upset.”

The FAO’s Director-General Qu Dongyu, a longtime Chinese agronomist, appeared to reference Davis’ dismissal in remarks last Tuesday.

Qu threatened to fire more FAO staff for what he described as political activism.

“We are not going to allow you to play the game here of human rights,” he said.

“Of course, human rights are very important, but they have a human rights agency in Geneva. If you want to take care (of human rights), go there. That’s why (when) some senior members play political games here, I fire him. I’m a very soft person. I didn’t fire that many. I’m going to use my last year … to fire more if they’re against the law.”

Qu’s public comments had stunned Davis and his fellow FAO staff members, the former official said.

“Even more than the threat about firing people was just what he said about human rights. I think that really shocked people because it undermined the foundations of why we’re here basically, or why FAO is part of the UN and why the UN exists,” he added.

“We’re surely an organization which is based on human rights, right?”

Davis also highlighted the FAO’s slogan: “Leave no one behind.”

In a letter notifying Davis of his dismissal, the agency said that Qu was “no longer confident in your (Davis’) ability to discharge your obligations in the manner required of a senior international civil servant.”

The letter referenced paragraphs featured in the official code of conduct for international civil servants, highlighting “honesty, truthfulness, impartiality and incorruptibility,” as well as self-imposed limits on public expression of personal views on “controversial matters.”

Davis responded with a letter of his own, in which he described the FAO leadership’s approach as “simply wrong”.

He wrote: “Silence in the face of suffering and injustice is not neutrality; it is complicity. Shutting down discussion on the starvation of the Palestinian people weakens the reputation of the organization and the legitimacy of our mandate. Being true to our mandate calls for a frank and open discussion around starvation, famine, and genocide in Palestine and elsewhere.”

Davis said that he previously faced criticism by his agency’s leadership for a briefing paper published in May last year.

The text, authored by Davis’ team, highlighted the level of hunger among Palestinians in Gaza and the corresponding positions of international humanitarian law.

“The current conditions in the Gaza Strip … reflect a gross violation of the right to food and the unlawful obstruction of humanitarian assistance,” it said.

Several weeks after the report’s publication, it was removed from the agency’s website following leadership advice.

During one incident at regular vigils for Gaza attended by Davis, an altercation took place on Oct. 23 after a woman identified herself as an Israeli diplomat and took photos of those in attendance.

A report by an FAO witness said: “The person explained she was the permanent representative of Israel, and asked if we were allowed to do these events, and asked specifically who says we could not take photographs.”

After being informed that she could not take photos, the woman told FAO security that she was being harassed.

FAO’s management had approved the Gaza briefing paper, seminar and weekly vigils, and at no point was Davis informed that his behavior encompassed code of conduct violations.

Davis said he had lodged a formal appeal against his firing.

“I filed the appeal mostly as a matter of principle, not because I’m looking for or expecting any monetary compensation or anything like that,” he said.

“I have requested to be reinstated, and also for them to take back the accusations that they made against me.”