As USGs and ASGs shield themselves behind UN80 to settle scores and terminate staff under the guise of budget cuts and restructuring, the United Nations Office of Human Resources (OHR) has gone a step further. In a calculated effort to insulate themselves from future appeals and avoid paying higher awards before the UNDT and UNAT, they have opened the door to “early separation packages,” enticing staff to depart voluntarily rather than litigate.
On paper, this is framed as an option. In practice, it is a legal trap.
Staff are being invited to sign away their rights, including ongoing complaints or pending cases against the Organization, under the pretext of “budgetary necessity.” OHR is well aware that while staff have only a marginal chance of prevailing before the Tribunals when separations are justified by genuine budget cuts, the current targets are not incidental redundancies: many include staff with active conflicts, harassment claims, or pending accountability proceedings against senior officials.
The construct is deliberate: frame the separation as ‘voluntary’ while embedding a waiver clause of such sweeping breadth that it extinguishes all present and future claims, thereby foreclosing judicial recourse and insulating the Organization from liability for misconduct, however egregious.
This provision is set out verbatim in the UN80 agreement:
“I agree to withdraw all claims and appeals I may have pending against the Organization, and I will make no further claims or appeals against the Organization arising from my terms of appointment or separation from service with the Organization. In addition, I acknowledge that as at the date of this agreed termination, I have no further claims against the Organization;”
Staff Beware.
just a few days ago, on 11 August 2025, the United Nations Dispute Tribunal issued a landmark judgment, Melbiksis v. Secretary-General of the United Nations (UNDT/2025/053) the first of what I believe will be many, in which UNHCR relied on a similar “no-sue” clause to block receivability. The Tribunal ruled:
“Accordingly, the Tribunal finds that the Applicant’s three misconduct reports are not covered by the settlement agreement, including its no-sue clause.
The Tribunal notes that if a no-sue clause of a settlement agreement was to be extended to cover all future misconduct reports of a releasor (in the present case, the Applicant) concerning a releasee (UNHCR), the risk would be that any rejection of a misconduct report regarding, even very serious, disciplinary offences could subsequently be shielded entirely from judicial review.
Creating such a culture of impunity defies the fundamental principle of access to justice and would not be in the best interest of the Organization.”
A Culture of Impunity.
This is precisely what UN80 is institutionalizing.
The UN’s abuse of such clauses was already exposed earlier in 2023 in Shahwan v. Commissioner-General of UNRWA(UNRWA/DT/2023/018/Corr.01). UNRWA, in particular, is well known for its systemic and recurrent misuse of unlawful non-disclosure agreements and separation terms to silence staff and extinguish legitimate claims. In this case, the Tribunal condemned the widespread reliance on such separation agreements and NDAs, ruling:
“The agreed conditions at stake (sections 12 and 13 Separation Agreement) were therefore obviously violating the standards enshrined in the Standards of Conduct.
All individuals involved in the negotiations and consequent conclusion of the conditions in question should have been aware that the agreed conditions were not in compliance with the regulatory framework of UNRWA and the UN.
The Tribunal finds that there is a hierarchy among the obligations in question. The Tribunal finds that, in general, obligations deriving from the UN Charter, the Standards of Conduct and UNRWA Regulations and Rules prevail over obligations deriving from agreements concluded by the Agency with an individual staff member.
The Tribunal thus holds that the conditions in such an agreement that are not in compliance with the regulatory framework of UNRWA and UN values and principles cannot be enforced before and by this Tribunal.”
The legal principle is unequivocal: no private agreement, however artfully drafted or coercively negotiated, can lawfully displace obligations derived from the UN Charter, the Standards of Conduct, or the Organization’s regulatory framework.
Any clause purporting to do so is null, unenforceable, and contrary to the Organization’s foundational values.
Signing this agreement means knowingly waiving the very rights the UN Charter guarantees you:
“We the peoples of the United Nations determined to … reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, … and to establish conditions under which justice … can be maintained.”
If the Tribunal has already determined that such clauses violate the Organization’s own regulatory framework, why would you place your trust in the Secretary-General, UN80, and his senior team, the very officials urging you to sign what the law has found they cannot enforce?
Big salute Nadine for the courage, factual and transparent analysis all your articles reflect. in the past 15-20yrs the UN management all over deteriorated significantly. every article you issued touched and addressed one or more of UN staff all over the globe. We, specially the old timers, lost trust in this organization which is not abiding by the charter it was established for. the Charter now should read “ to be recruited in the system, having free privileges that includes but not limited to promotions reassignment etc you are to rely on whom you know and not what you know” in summary keep it up opening the eyes of those who prefer to pretend to be blind.