A critical legal analysis of UNDT Judge Buffa’s jurisprudence on sexual harassment, sexual assault, and sexual exploitation.
Despite having issued four separate UNDT judgments in sexual harassment, assault and exploitation cases in which he exonerated the perpetrators, rescinded their terminations, and awarded up to two years’ compensation in lieu, even after every single one was subsequently vacated by UNAT, UNDT Judge Buffa appears determined to persist in what can only be described as a judicial crusade to rehabilitate UN staff members found to have sexually harassed, sexually assaulted, raped or exploited their female colleagues.
What is glaring is not merely that UNAT has repeatedly nullified his judgments, it is that Judge Buffa continues to ignore, dismiss, or otherwise sidestep UNAT jurisprudence in areas where UNAT has already resolved the legal issue and articulated binding standards. The jurisprudential message from UNAT to Judge Buffa has been categorical. Yet Judge Buffa proceeds as though these precedents are advisory rather than binding, as though the legal reasoning of higher judicial authority is optional, and as though his personal interpretive framework supersedes the institutional legal regime.
In earlier writings dating back to 2023, I asked: What explains such a sustained departure from appellate jurisprudence? By what logic does a sitting judge repeatedly arrive at interpretations that UNAT has already rejected? How could a judge charged with administering the internal justice system arrive at legal conclusions so dramatically misaligned with the Organization’s zero-tolerance framework and repeatedly contradicted by appellate review?
At the time, I argued that the cultural priors and embedded social beliefs of the Judge, particularly those regarding gender, sexuality, power, and consent were not incidental to his rulings, but constitutive of them. I referenced the 2007 Duke Law Research Paper by Jennifer Zimbroff, which observed:
“studies of sexual harassment perception are not intended to answer whether any specific plaintiff’s circumstances satisfy the legal criteria for sexual harassment. Rather, they serve to demonstrate the potential differences with which victims, alleged perpetrators, judges, and juries perceive and consider appropriate handling of unwelcome sexualized approaches. Such studies may demonstrate how the cultural affiliations of different judges and jurors will influence their perceptions of whether sexual harassment occurred and, if so, was responded to appropriately.”
This is manifest in Judge Buffa’s judicial output. After reviewing all of Judge Buffa’s UNDT judgments in which he nullified or declined to substantiate sexual misconduct, all of which were later vacated entirely by UNAT, the pattern is unmistakable. His legal reasoning consistently reflects a viewpoint that normalizes male sexual entitlement and places the burden of reaction, resistance, articulation, and proof upon female victims. In so doing, he treats women’s testimony as unreliable, their silence as consent, their embarrassment as acquiescence, and their reluctance to report as insignificance.
In other words: his jurisprudence reveals a consistently gendered epistemology of disbelief.
The UNDT Code of Conduct for Judges requires fairness in proceedings and explicitly prohibits sexist or discriminatory conduct. UNDT Judges are obligated to uphold the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the ICCPR documents rooted in dignity, bodily autonomy, and equality before the law. Further, UNDT Judges are appointed by the General Assembly upon recommendations of the Internal Justice Council in consultation with OHR.
We therefore ask the Internal Justice Council and the General Assembly directly:
How can a UNDT judge whose judgments repeatedly erode the credibility of women reporting sexual misconduct; judgments that have systemically and consecutively been repudiated by UNAT, be said to meet the standard of impartiality and integrity expected under the UNDT judicial mandate?
Judge Buffa is not advancing the Secretary-General’s zero-tolerance framework for sexual harassment, sexual exploitation, and sexual abuse. In fact, his most recent judgment makes one reality brutally clear: the price that women pay when they report sexual misconduct is professional risk, reputational threat, and exposure to retaliation, while the alleged perpetrator is offered the jurisprudential shelter of Judge Buffa’s reasoning.
Unless a case of sexual violence meets an almost impossible standard (one approaching forensic documentation) Judge Buffa’s instinct is to clear the accused. Whether the staff member verbalized sexual comments, circulated pornographic imagery, engaged in invasive contact, or weaponized professional authority through sexual innuendo and sexual acts, Judge Buffa appears unwilling to attribute legal gravity to the act unless the violence is so explicit as to be undeniable.
May we therefore ask the Internal Justice Council and OHR: what safeguards are in place to ensure that UNDT judges, who are entrusted with adjudicating claims of harassment and abuse, do not themselves perpetuate the very attitudes that normalize such misconduct?
How can we ensure that those chosen to sit in judgment are truly aligned with the Organization’s legal commitments and ethical imperatives?
In case after case, Judge Buffa introduces interpretive thresholds that shift the burden of proof onto women and dilute the legal definition of harassment into a form of harmless social mischief.
Case No 1: Conteh v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. UNDT/2020/189
In Conteh, Conteh v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. UNDT/2020/189 (6 November 2020), Judge Buffa built a narrative of minimization around the perpetrator’s conduct. He characterized the groping, grabbing, and physical intrusion into women’s bodies as merely “episodic,” “not threatening,” and “without specific consequences,” even noting approvingly that the staff member “gave up the harassment when he understood that his ‘rude advances’ were not accepted.” In Judge Buffa’s view, the misconduct had “no impact (or at least a very limited impact) on the work environment,” and, most revealingly, he opined that “the heaviest disciplinary sanctions would perhaps have been appropriate if the investigators had found evidence that the Applicant had engaged in sexual relationships with his subordinates but they did not.”
Judge Buffa’s standard in Conteh appears to be: unless the misconduct crosses into explicit sexual intercourse, it cannot warrant dismissal. And so he rescinded the termination decision and ordered compensation in lieu.
UNAT’s response was unequivocal UNAT Judgment (appeal, reversal) Conteh v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. 2021-UNAT-1171. It found that Judge Buffa’s limitation of termination “only to instances of inappropriate sexual relationships” was “without authority or merit” and actively “undermines the broad spectrum of sexual harassment that can and does occur.” UNAT went on to reassert a core legal principle:
“there should be no requirement for the conduct to be repetitive,” and “one instance could conceptually be sufficient” for separation. Moreover, UNAT held that sexual harassment “does not require any concrete or palpable result,” and that “unwelcome advances and inappropriate behaviour towards colleagues such as touching their body parts… are per se grave enough to cause harm.” It further reminded Judge Buffa that the offence is not dependent on “ill intent,” nor on the frequency of professional interactions, which are “a minor element” under a zero-tolerance policy.
Conteh thus reveals the core of Buffa’s jurisprudence: sexual harm, in his view, must be physically extreme, repeated, or visibly harmful in order to qualify as harassment. The effect is consistent: a systemic raising of evidentiary thresholds for victims and a lowering of accountability thresholds for perpetrators. Conteh is the jurisprudential seed from which Judge Buffa’s future exonerations sprouted.
Case No 2: UNDT Judgment: Szvetko v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. UNDT/2022/026
The Szvetko judgment exposes Judge Buffa’s cultural comfort with sexualized male behaviour disguised as mischief. Here, Judge Buffa treated comments such as “your breasts look like mountains” and inviting a female colleague to imagine the “pleasure” of water jets “between a woman’s legs,” and even the showing of nude male genitalia, as “euphoric jokes,” “boutades,” and as behaviour akin to “a boy on a school trip,” devoid of any intention to humiliate.
Once again, Judge Buffa’s eye is on the man, his mood, his context, his lack of maliciousness, rather than the impact on the women subjected to this conduct. The degradation of a professional woman into a sexual object is framed as childish play. Judge Buffa concluded that the misconduct “was not severe in nature” and again portrayed the perpetrator as merely exuberant rather than predatory.
UNAT’s reversal was devastating (UNAT Judgment (appeal, reversal):
Balint Szvetko v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. 2023-UNAT-1311). It found Judge Buffa’s interpretation “speculative,” noted that he had “disregarded the evidence,” and reaffirmed the applicable legal framework. Crucially, UNAT held that this behaviour “exhibits a disposition which caused the complainants significant discomfort and anxiety and impacted their ongoing professional relationship,” and that Judge Buffa’s conclusion that the misconduct lacked severity because it occurred briefly was legally untenable. The Tribunal rejected Judge Buffa’s trivialization of pornographic exposure, stating plainly that “showing a colleague a picture of a penis can cause offence or humiliation,” and that “all individuals are entitled to be free of this kind of puerile behaviour.” The conduct, UNAT clarified, “violates the obligation of an international civil servant to uphold the highest standard of integrity,” and “naturally would undermine professional confidence.”
Here, Judge Buffa’s habitual logic becomes unmistakable: women must tolerate sexually explicit intrusion so long as the perpetrator can be framed as joking, playful, inebriated, or boyish. It is the judicial romanticization of male entitlement. Under Judge Buffa’s lens, women are expected to be resilient, unaffected, unhumiliated, and if they are humiliated, it is dismissed as hypersensitivity.
Szvetko mirrors Conteh in dismantling the same Buffa principle: that a woman must prove explicit distress, explicit damage, explicit consequences to her career rather than simply the fact of being sexually objectified in the workplace.
Case No 3: UNDT Judgment (with Buffa’s dissent): AAE v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. UNDT/2022/030
In AAE, Judge Buffa’s dissenting opinion exposes the apex of his judicial perspective on sexual violence. Faced with a case in which a D-1 Director raped a colleague after she told him she did not want sex and attempted to leave, Judge Buffa turned to the woman’s behaviour; not to the man’s actions, as the decisive factor. He invoked her “friendly disposition” as “exculpatory,” and he questioned how rape could occur when the woman did not scream, did not physically struggle, and did not reiterate her objection multiple times. His reasoning assimilates friendliness into invitation and silence into consent. It asks, implicitly: why didn’t she resist harder?
But your Honour:
A Kiss is not a Free Pass for Sex.
A kiss is not a contract. and;
Silence under shock is not consent.
UNAT’s full bench demolished this reasoning UNAT Judgment (full bench): AAE v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. 2023-UNAT-1332. It held that the Director had engaged in “non-consensual sex… amounting to sexual assault,” and that relying on tacit consent or the absence of repeated objections was legally invalid. UNAT affirmed that sexual assault can occur “without threats of violence,” particularly within a power-imbalanced relationship, and accepted the victim’s explanation that she did not scream because she was “in shock,” “ashamed,” and “cognizant of her precarious situation.”
Here, as in Conteh and Szvetko, Judge Buffa’s analysis repeatedly turns to female reaction, rather than male action, as the evidentiary hinge. The woman carries the burden of proving fear; the man is relieved of the burden of proving respect. The judicial gaze is male-centric: what mattered to Judge Buffa was not whether the man violated the woman’s autonomy, but whether the woman reacted loudly enough to convince him.
Case No 4: UNDT Judgment: Makeen v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. UNDT/2023/071
In the Makeen case, Judge Buffa again applied his consistent judicial relativism around sexual harm, this time in the context of sexual exploitation. Here, the perpetrator was a 53-year-old married UN staff member who repeatedly engaged in sexual acts with an 18-year-old impoverished woman who cleaned his home, cooked for him, and was economically dependent on him. Yet Judge Buffa saw no power dynamic, no coercive context, no vulnerability, only “consensual” sexual interaction “pertaining to the Applicant’s private life.”
This reasoning is revealing: Judge Buffa treats power disparity as irrelevant if the victim technically agreed to be present, or did not explicitly object, or, in this case, was merely young, poor, unprotected, and dependent. He reads “consent” where the law sees coercion by circumstance.
UNAT’s reversal was once again categorical (Makeen v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. 2024-UNAT-1461). It held that:
“Consent is immaterial to the offence of sexual exploitation and abuse.”
With that single sentence, UNAT dismantled Judge Buffa’s entire operative premise. It went further:
“V01 was unable to fully consent due to the unequal relationship and power imbalance that existed between her and Mr. Makeen.”
Here, UNAT stated plainly what Judge Buffa refused to see: that consent is not a matter of mere verbal or physical acquiescence, but must be free of dependency, intimidation, and deprivation. The Tribunal stressed that the perpetrator held “a position of trust and support,” and that the victim’s “economic and social status put her in a state of dependency.”
UNAT also directly contradicted Judge Buffa’s claim that the misconduct pertained to private life:
“the duty of staff members to act with integrity… extends to their conduct both within and outside the workplace due to the potential reputational damage their adverse actions may cause to the Organization.”
Once again, Judge Buffa shielded a male UN actor by shrinking the scope of accountability to the boundaries of the bedroom, as though sexual access to a dependent teenager employed in one’s home were merely private recreation. UNAT restored the definition of sexual abuse to its legal and ethical meaning: exploitation of vulnerability, not romantic interaction. This case illustrates transactional sex under conditions of imbalance, dependency, and vulnerability. If a young woman cooks your meals, cleans your floors, and is financially dependent on you, she cannot freely consent.
Judge Buffa’s approach in Makeen reveals his intellectual consistency: in Conteh, he could not see harm unless it disrupted work; in Szvetko, he could not see harassment unless accompanied by ill intent; in AAE, he could not see rape unless force or screaming occurred; and in Makeen, he could not see exploitation unless the victim explicitly vocalized objection despite dependency.
All these judgments clearly point to repetition of Judge Buffa’s cultural assumptions about women’s consent.
Case No 5: UNDT Judgment: Samarasinha v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. UNDT/2025/047 (July 2025) UNAT: appeal pending (not yet adjudicated at appellate stage)
And then we arrive at Samarasinha, the newest UNDT judgment issued in July 2025; the one where Judge Buffa again cleared a male senior official at the D-1 level despite testimonies from multiple women and corroborating diplomatic witnesses.
Here the pattern repeats so perfectly it becomes almost formulaic. Even though there were clear shortcomings in the OIOS investigation, Judge Buffa went on to dismiss another allegation of sexual assault because the victim was drunk, because the recollection was not detailed twelve years later, because she had “flirtatious behaviour” as though intoxication invalidates memory and flirting invalidates violation.
Judge Buffa wrote:
“a recollection… in a context of flirtatious behaviour… cannot substantiate an accusation of sexual assault, notably where the recollection of the events are not detailed and not lived by a sober person.”
Once again, Judge Buffa implies that a woman who was intoxicated cannot be sexually assaulted because she cannot remember explicitly enough to satisfy him.
He even dismissed the victim’s account of being pinned in bed as “weak,” and deemed the surrounding allegations “almost meaningless” and “without relevance.” He trivialized repeated physical contact, the staring at breasts, and the delivery of invitations laced with sexual undertones as “insignificant.” He wrote that these acts lacked “sexual connotation,” as though a senior official touching a woman’s hips and waist “while inebriated” somehow falls within acceptable social interaction in Judge Buffa’s mental universe.
And most tellingly, he declared that even cumulatively, these acts were “unable to substantiate… a behaviour of a gravity able to justify a measure like ALWOP.”
In other words: even if multiple women say it, even if they say it over time, even if external witnesses corroborate it, Judge Buffa does not find it serious.
Across these judgments, a consistent evidentiary posture emerges: women’s testimony is approached with skepticism, while male conduct is interpreted through a lens of benign intent. The result is a repeated downgrading of coercive acts into social misunderstandings and a systemic reluctance to attribute legal weight to female experience. This judicial orientation constitutes an epistemic bias, a presumption of male innocence that persists even in the face of multiple corroborating accounts and sustained patterns of behaviour.
This consistent minimization of sexual misconduct, repeated across Conteh, Szvetko, Makeen, AAE, and now Samarasinha, constitutes what I refer to as the Buffa Doctrine.
The United Nations has repeatedly affirmed that it upholds a zero-tolerance policy toward sexual harassment, sexual assault, and sexual exploitation. Yet in practice, zero tolerance is meaningless when judicial interpretation becomes a filter that drains these standards of substance. The question is no longer whether Judge Buffa’s judgments are legally flawed: UNAT has already established that by vacating four of them and will likely do the same with the fifth. The question is whether the internal justice architecture will continue to tolerate a judicial approach that repeatedly diminishes the gravity of sexual misconduct and re-centres sympathy on the perpetrators rather than the victims.
The Judges of the UNDT are not freelancers. They are appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Internal Justice Council, precisely because the legitimacy of their office derives not from personal opinion but from fidelity to the Organization’s legal framework. When a UNDT judge develops an identifiable pattern of jurisprudence that contradicts UNAT’s established standards, repeatedly, and in the same direction, affecting the same class of victims, it is no longer a matter of individual interpretation, it becomes a matter of institutional accountability.
Judge Buffa’s judicial reasoning, across these cases, does not advance the UN’s commitments under the Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the ICCPR. It does not uphold the Secretary-General’s professed principles of zero tolerance. It does not protect women in the system who report sexual misconduct. It does, however, provide a signal, loud, clear, unmistakable, to every perpetrator who might consider testing boundaries: that if their actions fall short of cinematic brutality, there is a judge who may well reinterpret coercion as misunderstanding, predation as exuberance, and violation as miscommunication.
So we must ask: how many times must a judge be reversed: four? five? six? before someone in authority acknowledges the pattern?
When does the Internal Justice Council intervene? When does the General Assembly exercise its oversight responsibility?
And how many women in the UN must endure professional retaliation, reputational harm, and psychological damage because a judge’s cultural biases consistently discount their experiences?
Precedent is the true expression of judicial philosophy. And Buffa’s precedents: overturned, contradicted, and repudiated, speak to a persistent bias incompatible with impartial adjudication.
