Bintou Keita: What is your greatest fear? — FLAPSS

The question

What is your greatest fear?

Originally asked

Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire

The exact prompt is fixed in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire and independently sustained in The Guardian's The Q&A over multiple decades.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Bintou Keita

UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General; head of the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

I don't believe in that. I think we are bringing who we are in the work.

Melissa Fleming, United Nations, 3 February 2025 source ↗

Others on this question

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I’ve a phobia of statues. It does go back to childhood. My parents brought me to look at a French church late at night. Since then I can’t deal with them.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 6 June 2026 source ↗

Being confined in a straitjacket.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, August 2018 source ↗

Ursula K. Le Guin Novelist, poet and essayist

Because, yeah, I am afraid of madness. It’s scary.

Recorded John Plotz, Public Books, 15 June 2015 source ↗

Marcus Brigstocke

It used to be loneliness, and it might still be.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 January 2025 source ↗

More from Bintou Keita

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Question Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought? Money & investment

I have my statement, but I can't deliver [it] because there's something else I have to do before. And in that moment, what came to me was humming, so I did it.

Recorded Melissa Fleming, United Nations, 3 February 2025 source ↗

Question What important truth do very few people agree with you on? Values & belief

I don't believe in that. I think we are bringing who we are in the work.

Recorded Melissa Fleming, United Nations, 3 February 2025 source ↗

Question Who do you turn to when you need advice? Relationships

I don't believe in that. I think we are bringing who we are in the work.

Recorded Melissa Fleming, United Nations, 3 February 2025 source ↗

Question What do you value most in your friends? Relationships

I don't believe in that. I think we are bringing who we are in the work.

Recorded Melissa Fleming, United Nations, 3 February 2025 source ↗

Question What are you most proud of? Identity & self

I'm very proud of the fact that, in spite of everything, the core mandate in terms of the protection of civilians is really flying very high everywhere in the mission. Everywhere. And I'm very hopeful with the young people of DRC and the women.

Recorded Melissa Fleming, Awake at Night podcast, series 12, United Nations, 2025 source ↗

Question What is the most rewarding part of being a parent? Relationships

I don't believe in that. I think we are bringing who we are in the work.

Recorded Melissa Fleming, United Nations, 3 February 2025 source ↗

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