51ÁÔÆæ

As a staff member on an FTA, the Applicant had no right in law to have his contract renewed. The decision to abolish the post encumbered by the Applicant was taken for legitimate business needs in that it was within the discretion of the decision makers within OCHA to conclude that the functions being performed by the Applicant at the time were part of OCHA¡¯s core mandate and that there was not the need to have a dedicated unit to carry them out. Having arrived at this decision and having regard to the need to streamline services and effect the required cost savings it was legitimate for OCHA...

The Tribunal notes that, while the non-selection decision is not explicitly mentioned in the Applicant¡¯s list of impugned decisions in his management evaluation request, it could be regarded as subsumed under the description of ¡°preselecting particular posts to go to external candidates¡± and the suggestion that the process was not transparent but ¡°opaque¡±. The Applicant did request management evaluation of the non-selection decisions and that his claim in this regard is receivable pursuant to art. 8.1(c) of the Dispute Tribunal¡¯s Statute and staff rule 11.2(a). As the Applicant failed to...

The Administration decided to re-examine an earlier decision not to review the two job descriptions. The Applicant was notified that after multiple reviews it was decided that the two job descriptions would not be revised. The Applicant received notification of this final and unambiguous decision at a moment, which puts her request for management evaluation well within the deadline. The application is deemed receivable.

The question of existence of an administrative decision capable of being reviewed by the UNDT in relation to the decision of 11 May 2017 had already been determined between the same parties by the virtue of final Judgment No. UNDT/2018/024. Therefore, based on res judicata, the application was rejected as irreceivable.

A matter cannot be before the MEU and the Dispute Tribunal simultaneously and allowing applicants to circumvent this process and file applications with the Tribunal before the deadline for a response to a request for management evaluation has passed would contravene the Tribunal¡¯s Statute and Rules of Procedure, undermine the time lines set out in the Staff Rules, and would be contrary to the intentions of the General Assembly.

Making a determination as to what constitutes a technical body is not a function of the Dispute or Appeals Tribunals. The overarching import of staff rule 11.2(a) read together with the UNDT Statute establishes the obligation of seeking management evaluation prior to invoking the jurisdiction of the Dispute Tribunal as a rule. That controlling element for the status of ¡°technical body¡± in the sense of staff rule 11.2(b), is designation by the SecretaryGeneral. Absent designation by the Secretary-General, ICSC is not to be deemed a technical body for the purpose of exempting the impugned...

Assuming that the 11 May 2017 communication conferred a general intent to implement the ICSC decision with respect to each and every staff member based in Geneva, such individual decisions had not yet been taken. This rendered the applications irreceivable. Moreover, even the decision of general order would have been rescinded by the next communication of 18 July 2017 in which the ICSC determined that its earlier measures would not be implemented as originally proposed. The application was dismissed as not receivable.

From both the testimonies and the documentary evidence before the Tribunal, it found as established that the dire financial situation at UNDP KCO, as it related to the ¡°11888 fund¡±, was the reason for the non-renewal of the Applicant¡¯s contract. The Applicant did not produce any evidence allowing the Tribunal to conclude that at the time of the contested decision, the ¡°11888 fund¡± still had funds to allow the Organization to renew her contract. While it is not contested that an incident occurred during the mission to Rwanda in 2014, the Tribunal does not find that the testimonies and...

The Applicant was required to submit a request for management evaluation. He did not do so within the expressly stipulated timeframe. Where the management evaluation was requested late, the result was as if it were not requested at all.

The Tribunal recalled that a request for management evaluation is a sine qua non for bringing an application except in cases where the advice was obtained from technical bodies, as determined by the Secretary-General, or of a decision taken at Headquarters in New York to impose a disciplinary or non-disciplinary measure. In the present case, there was no decision imposing disciplinary or administrative measures. The Applicant did not request management evaluation of any administrative decision related to the conduct of the investigation. The failure to seek management evaluation before...