In the corridors of United Nations offices worldwide, a large but often invisible workforce sustains the organization’s daily operations. These are the non-staff personnel: consultants, contractors, daily paid, UNVs, interns and other non-staff individuals whose numbers account for nearly half of the UN’s total workforce.
By design, their contracts offer the UN flexibility and cost-efficiency, particularly under the constraints of unpredictable funding. However, this model has come at a severe cost to fairness, labor rights, and organizational integrity.
For many, these contracts do not signify temporary or project-specific employment but rather a precarious, long-term engagement devoid of the protections afforded to staff. They perform roles that mirror those of regular staff, often for years on end, without access to basic benefits like leave, medical care, or even secure housing in hardship duty stations. These disparities challenge the ethics of such employment practices and the sustainability of the UN’s reliance on non-staff personnel.
The lack of duty of care towards non-staff personnel exacerbates these challenges. Non-staff personnel, particularly those working in hardship or emergency duty stations, face heightened risks without access to essential support systems.
Unlike staff members, they are often denied security measures, leave entitlements, or access to medical evacuation during crises. Mental health suffers as a consequence. Many non-staff personnel endure prolonged stress due to job insecurity and the pressures of performing critical roles under precarious conditions. The lack of mental health resources and welfare programs for non-staff workers highlights a serious gap in the UN’s labor practices.
I was recently informed of cases involving consultants in the art sphere, many of whom are young, aspiring artists initially recruited by the UN under formal consultant contracts. However, the UN failed to honor many of these contracts, leaving them unpaid and subsequently pressuring them to continue working for free under the guise of career development. Those who objected often faced blacklisting and now find themselves fighting alone with no access to legal channels to challenge these unfair labor practices. This exploitation has left many non-staff personnel feeling drained and disillusioned.
Despite calls for reform and periodic reviews by oversight bodies, particularly the latest the 2023 Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) report (Review of the use of non-staff personnel and related contractual modalities in the United Nations system organizations), and reports from the UN Ombudsman, nothing has changed.
Inertia persists.
The UN organizations often acknowledge the risks—both reputational and operational—of misusing non-staff contracts, but shortly afterward, business proceeds as usual. Policies are either inconsistently applied or blatantly circumvented, leaving individuals feeling frustrated and undervalued.
The Drivers Behind Non-Staff Contracts: Flexibility, Cost, and Funding Uncertainty
According to the JIU, three primary factors explain the increasing reliance on non-staff personnel: operational flexibility, cost-efficiency, and the unpredictability of funding. These contracts allow UN agencies to quickly scale their workforce in response to emergencies, shifting needs, and short-term projects. Unlike permanent staff contracts, which require lengthy recruitment and come with extensive benefits, non-staff contracts are administratively simpler and cheaper.
However, this flexibility has created a two-tier workforce. Non-staff personnel often work in roles indistinguishable from those of regular staff but with far fewer rights. In many cases, they are excluded from social protections such as retirement benefits, healthcare, and parental leave. In hardship duty stations, this disparity is even starker. Non-staff personnel lack access to secure housing and medical evacuation, even in crisis situations where staff receive these protections.
Organizations also cite funding volatility as a reason for their dependence on non-staff personnel. Many UN agencies rely heavily on extrabudgetary funding, which donors earmark for specific projects. This funding model discourages long-term staffing commitments, leading to the proliferation of temporary contracts. As a result, non-staff personnel have become an essential yet vulnerable segment of the UN workforce.
The Consequences of Misuse: High Turnover, Poor Morale, and Legal Risks
The overuse and misuse of non-staff contracts carry significant risks for the UN. High turnover rates, resulting from job insecurity and inadequate benefits, undermine institutional knowledge and organizational effectiveness. Non-staff personnel often feel demoralized, knowing that their contributions are undervalued despite their central role in program delivery.
Moreover, the UN exposes itself to potential legal liabilities by failing to adhere to international labor standards. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has emphasized that any work arrangement that meets the criteria of an employment relationship should be governed by staff contracts. Yet, many UN agencies continue to operate in a legal grey area, using non-staff personnel to perform continuous, core functions without regularizing their status.
Recent inspections have highlighted cases where non-staff personnel were subjected to poor contract management, including late payments and vague terms of reference. These issues exacerbate tensions within the workforce and fuel complaints to oversight bodies such as the Ombudsman and internal justice mechanisms.
The Illusion of Opportunity
For many, the path to a UN career begins with a consultancy contract, seen as a crucial first step towards permanent employment. Yet, this path often turns into a trap, a spiral that engulfs them in cycles of unpaid labor and exploitation. Instead of opportunity, these contracts become barriers, leaving individuals disillusioned and without legal recourse.
The fault does not lie with those who enter through this door but with the system that constructed it. The UN must confront and dismantle these harmful practices if it hopes to uphold the principles of fairness and human dignity it espouses.
Until then, this so-called door to opportunity will remain the wrong door for too many.
Thank you Nadine for continuing to highlight this situation. I fully agree with your refkection of the situation. WE have been trying to draw attention to this violation of internationally accepted employment standards with limited success. How can the UN talk about values of inclusion and respect and standards of fairness if what comes across as more than 1/3, sometimes 1/2, of its workforce work with such volatile short term contracts, ofetn for 10-20 years. That is just unacceptable. How does the UN want to attract and retain talent; how do we expect to get anywhere closer to a dialogue culture where colleagues feel invited to the table, and to contribute their ideas?
The Consultants Coordinating Board in Geneva was formed to advocate for consultants’ rights. However few consultants were interested in joining or participating in the CCB’s efforts. Most consultants were interested only in their own personal situation, not in addressing the systemic factors that created the situation. The CCB undertook two surveys, one in 2018 and one in 2022, indicating that conditions on the whole deteriorated for Geneva-based UN consultants in that time period.
You might also want to note that the “so-called door to opportunity” actually takes UN staff wannabes in the wrong direction: most consultant contracts bar the consultant from applying for a regular UN job within 6 months of the end of the consultancy contract.
As a current consultant within a UN agency, I can only validate the conditions described here.
A abussive self-regulated system which has excluded itself from local and international regulatory framework that protects staff from inobservance of rules and laws.
Have you look yet into the “non-career” sister organisations excluded from any retirement scheme, where people retires just with a lump-sum that may last until the day you die?
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Add that it immediately discriminates single parents who as non staff then do not get acess to education allowances for their children to attend school in duty station. Without education costs being contributed to or subsidised, it is normally unaffordable to take up these roles… so much for the principle of equality!