51ÁÔÆæ

Tribunal¡¯s review of eligibility for benefits: The Secretary-General has no discretion to grant or deny a benefit provided for in the Staff Regulations and Rules and is bound, in this respect, by the applicable rules. Accordingly, when the matter before the Tribunal concerns the refusal to grant a benefit, the Tribunal may only examine whether the staff member was eligible for, or entitled to, such benefit, without taking into account the grounds for refusal provided by the Administration. The fact that other staff members in the same situation may have been granted the disputed benefit is...

When the Tribunal is requested to exercise its jurisdiction under articles 2.1(c) and 8.2 of its Statute, the Tribunal¡¯s competence is limited to verifying whether the agreement reached through mediation has been implemented.Outcome:

Grounds for non-renewal: No provision requires the Administration to give the reasons for a non-renewal decision. However, when a staff member contests the non-renewal of his or her contract before the Tribunal, the Organization must provide the reasons for this decision and the staff member has the right to contest the legality of the same.Discretionary power and scope of judicial review: The Administration has discretion to organize its services and thus to finance or not a programme. It is not for the Tribunal to assess the correctness of this kind of decisions.Burden of proof of extraneous...

The UNDT found that the reason provided by the Administration for the non-renewal was not supported by the facts and that the decision was indeed based on extraneous factors. The decision of the ITC Senior Management Committee to merge several existing programs was never really implemented. A generic P-4 post was advertised in early 2012 under the new program, and funded through budget lines already available when the decision not to extend the Applicant¡¯s appointment was taken. The available evidence shows that the real motive of the decision was the fact that the Applicant¡¯s supervisor...

Pursuant to ITC/EDB/2015/07, when a fact-finding panel is appointed, it shall investigate the complaint and ¡°prepare a detailed report, giving a full account of the facts that they have ascertained in the process and attaching documentary evidence¡± (sec. 5.18). The report shall be submitted to the Director, DSP, who will review it together with the related documentation and make a recommendation on the appropriate course of action to the Executive Director, ITC (see secs. 5.15, 5.18, 5.19 and 5.20). Seeking assistance from OIOS was a reasonable solution in the framework of ITC/EDB/2015/07...

Whether the non-renewal decision is supported by the facts Although, as the Applicant¡¯s advanced, there was no documentary evidence explicitly showing that funding for the Pacific Project was to end in June 2017, other than the Respondent¡¯s assertion that the Pacific Project received no funding beyond 30 June 2017, the Tribunal found that there were enough elements that taken together supported the budgetary reason behind the non-renewal of the Applicant¡¯s appointment. The Tribunal noted, inter alia, that the Applicant and other ITC Officials were fully aware in February 2017 that the Donor...

Fixed-term post The record showed that the hiring manager for the fixed-term post found the Applicant not eligible as he did not meet one of the required criteria for it, namely ¡°[p]ractical experience in working in the area of sustainability standards¡±. Consequently, he was not invited to participate in the subsequent steps of the selection process. The Applicant¡¯s lack of experience in sustainably standards was properly recorded in the respective electronic selection system and, moreover, was communicated to the Applicant by email of 16 July 2018 in response to his query about the status of...