51ÁÔÆæ

Staff members with permanent appointments are afforded additional protections, particularly when nearing retirement age. Administration¡¯s obligation to protect the position of a permanent staff member includes, at least, an enquiry and the taking of reasonable steps to ascertain if there were any suitable positions available for the staff member. The staff member is required to cooperate in this search but the responsibility for protecting the position of the permanent employee is primarily with the employer.The universal obligation of both employee and employer to act in good faith towards...

Staff rule 111.2 (a) requires that a staff member who wishes to challenge an administrative decision to request the Secretary-General, within two months of notification of the said decision, for the decision to be reconsidered. This period starts from the notification of the first refusal decision. The sending by the administration of decisions confirming a first refusal does not reopen the deadlines. However, it is up to the judge to ascertain before rejecting a time-barred request that the staff member has not been misled by the administration on the terms of his appeal.

The Applicant filed a motion for interim measures requesting that the Tribunal order the Ethics Office to deliver recommendations on his case with respect to whistle-blowing retaliation; and to find a prima-facie violation of the Applicant¡¯s due-process rights concerning the non-renewal of his fixed-term contract with UNDP. The Tribunal rejected the motion to order the Ethics Office to deliver its recommendations and decided that the alleged violation of the Applicant¡¯s due process rights concerning the non-renewal of his fixed-term contract would be addressed during the review of the...

The meaning of any legislative provision is ascertained by the meaning of its words in the light of the intention of the rules as a whole. Where the wording of an instruction suggests that no exception is permitted, a number of common law jurisdictions have found the mandatory or directory dichotomy inappropriate.To establish the meaning and intention of a UN provision the relevant context is the hierarchy of the UN¡¯s internal legislation. This is headed by the Charter of the UN followed by resolutions of the General Assembly, staff regulation and rules, Secretary- General bulletins and then...

UNDT noted that the Applicant had until 2 February 2009 to file an appeal before the Joint Appeals Board. However, the Applicant¡¯s appeal was dated 27 February 2009 and was not received by the Joint Appeals Board until 3 March 2009. The Applicant¡¯s Counsel did not present any exceptional circumstance that prevented him from filing an appeal within the time limits prescribed in the Staff Rules then in effect. UNDT held that the request was therefore irreceivable. UNDT rejected the application.

A summary judgment was rendered because, as per art. 9 of the RoP, there was no dispute as to the material facts and judgment was restricted to matters of law. As one of the Applicants did not file an application in person (art. 8.1 (b), 3.1 and 2.1 of UNDT Statute) neither designated a counsel to act on his behalf (art. 12 of UNDT RoP), his application was deemed as not receivable. Furthermore, considering that an apology is beyond the remedies which may be ordered by the Tribunal in accordance with art. 10.5 of UNDT Statute, the application was declared as out of the Tribunal¡¯s mandate.

The applicant¡¯s supervisor should have recused himself from the Management Review Group (MRG) that reviewed the performance reports to avoid conflict of interest. However, this procedural irregularity was mitigated by the subsequent report of the Rebuttal Panel. Outcome: Respondent to pay the applicant the equivalent of one-month net base salary for suffering and stress.

Where evidence is capable of establishing a likelihood of a connection between potentially extraneous considerations and a failure to obtain a renewal of a contract, summary dismissal is unlikely to be warranted. Where one party raises sufficient material suggesting a particular fact or facts and the other party has the sole means of refuting that inference, then an evidentiary burden to call that evidence will ordinarily arise so that a failure to do so will make it relatively easy for the other party to treat the fact as proven. Outcome: The motion for summary judgment was dismissed, without...

UNDT noted that the Applicant, having received the contested decision on 4 February 2009, did not file her application with this Tribunal until 14 July 2009, which was beyond the 90 calendar-day deadline set forth in Article 8 of the UNDT Statute. UNDT noted that before it can reject an application, it must determine whether failure to meet the deadline could have resulted from erroneous information provided by the Administration. UNDT held that the Applicant was not given any information that could have misled her, because, as she herself wrote, it was not until after 1 July 2009 that she...

This judgment is confined to whether the applicant should have access to the report. The applicant was ordered be given access to the panel¡¯s report, subject to an undertaking of confidentiality.

UNDT found that the applicant could not be recruited from his general service post to the professional level without undergoing the required examination. The UNDT awarded three-months salary as compensation for the distress caused by the Organization.

The respondent had sufficient grounds to believe that the applicant had, by altering the form, breached a fundamental requirement safeguarding the integrity of the refugee resettlement programme of UNHCR. This amounted to serious misconduct and was in breach of staff regulation 1.2. However, the failure to have due regard to independent evidence of an oppressive work environment and by not carrying out a proper investigation, as unanimously recommended in the JDC report, the Secretary-General effectively deprived himself of material which would have placed the misconduct in its proper...

The Applicant was not considered in accordance with ST/AI/2006/3 as was his legal right.

The Applicant filed the application for a stay of proceedings in her case pending the outcome of an on-going recruitment process to the vacant post. The motion for stay of proceedings was refused because it lacked merit. The application was struck out because the Applicant was inviting the Tribunal to act as ¡°Big Brother¡± and constitute some kind of sword of Damocles over the head of the Respondent by keeping her case alive while the recruitment process was on and to possibly invoke it if she was not happy with the outcome of the exercise. This was an abuse of the Tribunal¡¯s process. In...

UNDT preliminarily rejected the Applicant¡¯s requests for recusal, holding that there were no longer any grounds for ruling on those requests since the UNDT President previously rejected those requests. Concerning the first application, UNDT held that the Applicant did not establish the illegality of the election of JC and that his application for the election to be declared null and void must be rejected. With regard to the Applicant¡¯s request that all decisions taken by the Internal Justice Council be rescinded, UNDT held that it is clear from General Assembly Resolution 62/228 of 22 December...

UNDT held that the application was receivable ratione temporis and ratione materiae. UNDT held that it could not be stated that the decision of nonrenewal was an improper exercise of discretion. UNDT held that the evidence showed that the Applicant¡¯s appointment was not renewed because there was no further funding available. UNDT held that there was no evidence to support the Applicant¡¯s contention that the decision to extend her contract in January 2008 using Joint Integrated Technical Assistance Programme funds, while she was working on other projects, was done in order to prepare the ground...

The contested decision was prima facie unlawful for the following reasons: i) there was a promise of renewal by the officer-in-charge that created a legitimate expectation of renewal, which placed on the Respondent a duty to consider whether it was not in the interest of the organisation that the expectation of the renewal of the employment should be fulfilled; and ii) the decision not to renew the contract of the Applicant appeared to be in breach of the Organization¡¯s Rules and amounted to an abuse of discretion. On the question of urgency, the Applicant had been informed that his contract...

The filing of the incomplete statement of appeal by 31 July 2008 complied with the time limit specified by the Staff Rules. The failure to file the full statement of appeal within one month (as was required by the JAB rules) may (not must) lead to implied abandonment in the absence of explanation and permits restoration of the appeal if an adequate explanation is provided; this does not require exceptional circumstances. The delay was explained by the need to obtain the investigative report and its annexures lying at the centre of the case. What constitutes an adequate explanation will vary...

The decision not to renew the Applicant¡¯s contract was prima facie unlawful because it appeared to be in breach of the Organization¡¯s Rules and in breach of international legal norms relating to due process. On the question of urgency, the Applicant had been informed that his contract would be terminated on 3 September 2009. Notwithstanding that it had allegedly been agreed that the contract would be extended after 3 September 2009, the matter was still urgent because this was not the first time that this particular strategy had been used by the Respondent towards the Applicant. Having...