Is Brazil Quietly Consolidating Control Over the ISA’s Justice System?

Today, the United Nations General Assembly is set to take a decision that will have profound implications for the International Seabed Authority (ISA) and for the integrity of the UN’s internal justice system. The Assembly will vote on the appointment of new judges to the UN Dispute Tribunal (UNDT) and the UN Appeals Tribunal (UNAT), and among the nominees recommended for appointment are two Brazilian nationals, one to each court, at the very moment when the ISA, led by a Brazilian Secretary-General, Leticia Carvalho is the subject of urgent legal challenges and procedural failures that have already alarmed observers across the system.

This convergence is a configuration that could potentially influence, concentrate, or even consolidate control over every judicial stage through which ISA administrative actions must pass. Under ISA’s statute, staff members challenge administrative decisions internally before the Joint Appeals Board (JAB). JAB’s decisions, including suspension of action requests, merits review, and recommendations, are then appealed directly to UNAT, which serves as the final and only external judicial instance for ISA matters. There is no UN Dispute Tribunal (UNDT) stage for ISA. The judicial chain is therefore short, fragile, and highly exposed to influence.

These bodies must be independent of each other, institutionally distinct, and free from any perception of national or executive influence. Yet today’s vote is taking place while the ISA’s internal justice system is still recovering from a complete shutdown triggered by the Secretary-General’s earliest decisions, and while new judges, of the same nationality as the Secretary-General (Brazil) are being nominated to the very tribunals that form the appellate pathway for ISA staff.

The vote occurring today has the potential to place a judge of the same nationality as the respondent organization’s executive head in the seat of final judicial authority over that organization. In the midst of the most serious governance crisis the ISA has ever faced, this creates an unavoidable institutional question: Who ultimately controls access to justice at the ISA?

Before her election, in July 2024, Letícia Reis de Carvalho wrapped her candidacy in the rhetoric of transparency and virtue, presenting herself as the reformer who would cleanse the ISA of the opacity she insinuated had plagued it for years:

“For me, the mission of the ISA and the leadership of the ISA is to be a trustee — an honest broker… It should offer transparency of its own procedures… If you are a trustee of the biggest commons on Earth, you cannot be called obscure or opaque in any way. We absolutely need practices that can turn things from opaqueness to transparency.” excerpt from an interview on 4 July 2024

Those promises collapsed almost immediately upon her assumption of office on 1 January 2025.

Within her first forty-eight hours, six staff members ( P-3s, P-4s, a D-1 Chief of Staff, and a D-2) the majority who had signed valid fixed-term contracts in December 2024 and had already entered on duty, received abrupt notifications informing them that ISA would be “unable to complete the onboarding process,” while two others saw their contracts suddenly terminated under the guise of restructuring. Under settled UN administrative law, acceptance of an offer followed by entry on duty completes the appointment. It cannot be undone unilaterally. UNAT has repeatedly held that such withdrawals are unlawful, constitute an abuse of authority, and violate Article 101 of the UN Charter. Nevertheless, these staff members were removed from their posts without reason, due process, or remedy.

As the staff filed urgent motions with the JAB, seeking immediate review of these abrupt decisions, the crisis escalated further. The Secretary-General dismantled the entire JAB structure within days of the motions being submitted. The tribunal ceased to function by 7 January 2025, leaving staff with no internal mechanism and no access to justice during the precise moment in which they needed it. 

When UNAT later reviewed this situation, it expressly noted Order No. 2024-591, 

“concern that the JAB was dismantled temporarily without prior warning given to ISA staff members and with no reasons provided by the Administration,” observed that this had “denying the staff members access to justice in the interim,” and concluded that “the temporary void rendered meaningless the JAB suspension of action mechanism.”

After dismantling the JAB, the ISA simultaneously moved ahead with recruitment to fill the very posts it had unlawfully vacated, thereby obstructing the possibility of reinstatement before the internal justice process had even begun.

Five weeks later, the Secretary-General appointed a new chair of the reconstituted JAB: Martha Halfeld, a former UNAT judge and, crucially, another Brazilian national. This appointment placed a compatriot with appellate-level judicial experience at the head of the very tribunal responsible for reviewing challenges to her own administrative decisions, raising profound concerns about the structural independence of ISA’s internal justice mechanism.

These concerns deepened when, in a separate motion filed by the dismissed D-1 Chief of Staff, UNAT Order No. 2024-592 (Bourrel) revealed that ISA had instructed a private security company to disable her home alarm system in Jamaica while she and her daughter were still residing there. Her sworn affidavit states that this action was intended to intimidate and cause distress, a clear breach of duty of care.

And now we return to today’s vote: a decision that will determine who sits on the UNDT and ultimately who hears appeals at UNAT.

The ISA Secretary-General is Brazilian.

The newly appointed JAB Chair is Brazilian and former UNAT judge.

One recommended UNDT judge is Brazilian.

One recommended UNAT judge is Brazilian.

The question is not whether the nominees are qualified; they are. The question is whether any justice system can afford a configuration in which the respondent (ISA), the internal reviewer (JAB chair), and both appellate judicial authorities (UNDT and UNAT judges) may all be led by nationals of the same Member State at the exact moment that the legality of ISA’s actions is under scrutiny.

The UN’s internal justice system has always held that justice must not only be done; it must be seen to be done. Today’s vote tests that principle. It raises unavoidable questions about recusal, structural safeguards, and the preservation of judicial independence.

How can ISA staff, who have already experienced the erasure of their internal tribunal, trust a system in which each stage of review now appears tethered, directly or indirectly, to a single national nexus?

What assurances will be provided that Brazilian judges will recuse themselves from ISA-related cases?

And what message does this send to the entire UN workforce about the stability, independence, and integrity of the justice system designed to protect them?

And now, as today’s vote proceeds, the configuration becomes even more difficult to ignore. Brazil has nominated one judge to the UNDT and one judge to the UNAT in the same electoral cycle; a former UNAT judge has already been installed as Chair of the ISA’s JAB; the ISA Secretary-General is Brazilian; and, adding an additional layer, one of the current members of the UN Board of Auditors and UN Panel of External Auditors ( Mr. Vital de Rêgo Filho, President of the Brazilian Federal Court of Accounts) is also Brazilian, entrusted with overseeing the financial integrity of UN entities, including the ISA.

When the respondent, the internal reviewer, the external auditor, and the proposed appellate judges all converge around a single Member State at the precise moment when the ISA’s governance is under judicial scrutiny, the question becomes unavoidable:

Is Brazil positioning itself to control the ISA’s system of justice and its fiduciary oversight, deliberately or by design? or is the UN system sleepwalking into a concentration of influence it has not yet fully understood?