Nadine Kaddoura is a fierce advocate of justice, accountability, and transparency in the United Nations. Read more, be inquisitive, and demand answers.
On 22 September, the General Assembly will resume the High-Level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution.
For those who missed the first round back in July: this conference was mandated by Member States through two GA resolutions. France and Saudi Arabia were named co-chairs, and Member States actually seemed serious about producing an “action-oriented outcome document” to finally chart an irreversible path toward peace. For a brief moment, there was even a glimmer of hope. But Washington was never going to let that stand.
They wasted no time unleashing a full-blown counterattack, trying to sink the entire effort before it could even leave the dock accusing the UN, and by extension many of their own Western European allies, of staging nothing more than a publicity stunt. Washington somehow managed to insult both its enemies and its closest allies in one breath. Their line couldn’t have been clearer:
“The United States will not participate in this insult but will continue to lead real-world efforts to end the fighting and deliver a permanent peace. Our focus remains on serious diplomacy: not stage-managed conferences designed to manufacture the appearance of relevance.”
And these so-called “real-world efforts”? In practice, they amounted to handing Hamas a fake negotiation paper while, at the same time, green-lighting if not outright ordering Israel to bomb Qatar, the very state hosting mediation talks.
In Washington’s lexicon, this is what passes for “serious diplomacy”: classic sabotage dressed up as statecraft, deception passed off as negotiation, and the bombing of allies framed as peacemaking. A choice that says more about Washington’s contempt for peace than any statement ever could.
Meanwhile, on 29 July, a bloc of Western European allies joined by Australia, Canada, and New Zealand cycled through the usual talking points: condemn October 7, call for a ceasefire, reaffirm support for a two-State solution. But tucked at the end of their joint statement was a line that betrayed the real intent:
“Urge countries who have not done so yet to establish normal relations with Israel, and to express their willingness to enter into discussions on the regional integration of the State of Israel.”
Normal relations. Regional integration. With a state that bombs whoever it wants, whenever it wants, even Arab countries that parade themselves as allies, the same ones bending over backwards to host negotiations.
And yet their Western partners urge the world to normalize ties with Israel and, while they’re at it, to normalize being bombed and accepting life under the constant threat of imminent attacks anywhere in the world, whenever Israel decides. In essence, this is Washington asking Arab states to absorb Israeli bombs, live under the threat of more, and still line up to shake the hand that strikes them.
But Washington left the best for last.
Just days ago, as the General Assembly opened and announced the resumption of the conference on 22 September, the U.S. representative said she was “surprised and dismayed” by the process, once again denouncing the conference as “an ill-timed publicity stunt” that would “prolong the war and undermine efforts to achieve peace” but assuring the world that Washington would continue to lead “real-world efforts to end the fighting.”
And those “real-world efforts” revealed themselves almost immediately: four days later, Israel bombed Qatar with the blessing of the U.S. This is the U.S. definition of peacemaking: preach diplomacy in New York while authorizing airstrikes on allies in the Gulf.
Europe, meanwhile, should look hard in the mirror. How long will it betray the very values it claims to stand for (rule of law, human rights, justice) while dressing up capitulation as diplomacy? Urging “normal relations” with Israel as it bombs mediators and allies is nothing less than complicity.
A conscious choice for complicity.
Arab states should take note. Qatar will not be the last. Washington’s message is crystal clear: absorb the blows, keep quiet, normalize relations, and call it peace, until it is your turn under the bombs.
At the very moment the United Nations, through the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), acknowledges the devastation in the occupied West Bank, UNRWA management is actively punishing its staff, and the United Nations Appeals Tribunal (UNAT) reinforces this by refusing to recognize the exceptional hardship they endure.
In July 2025, OHCHR warned that the Israeli “Iron Wall” operation has already forced the displacement of some 30,000 Palestinians and forms part of a broader pattern contributing to the illegal annexation of the West Bank and that there was an unprecedented “sharp surge in killings, attacks, and harassment of Palestinians by Israeli settlers and security forces” with Palestinian injuries in June 2025 reaching their highest monthly total in over 20 years.
The United Nations Appeals Tribunal (UNAT), however, took a shocking opposite view: that such devastation is no more than the ordinary lot of Palestinians.
“the difficult economic conditions of living in the ‘occupied Palestine territories’ do not make Mr. Hejab’s case exceptional” and that,
“difficulty in finding another job for an older staff member close to retirement in – Occupied Palestine- cannot be considered as an unusual circumstance” (paras. 65–67).
This reasoning exposes just how profoundly disconnected UNAT is from the daily realities of Palestinian life and their unimaginable suffering. While OHCHR acknowledges forced displacement, widespread killings, and economic collapse, the UN Tribunal reduces these very conditions to routine or normal challenges. It is against this backdrop that the case of Khaled Hejab must be examined. Equally disturbing is that it was not only the UN Tribunal that failed Mr. Hejab. UNRWA management itself set the stage by building untruthful and inflated allegations to justify the Palestinian senior staff’s dismissal. On the surface, the Agency proclaims its duty of care and its commitment to staff but in reality it is actively engineering the removal of Palestinian staff.
The particularities of the case make UNAT’s dismissal all the more troubling. UNRWA management dismissed Mr. Hejab on multiple baseless and distorted allegations, including an alleged conflict of interest, supposed mismanagement, and the deletion of private WhatsApp messages.
That supposed conflict of interest was nothing more than the fact that Hejab and a contractor had been neighbors for forty years in the same refugee camp and had attended the same school. UNRWA chose to treat this as compromising his integrity, as if such proximity were evidence of collusion.
But what does it even mean to be “neighbors for forty years” in the context of a Palestinian refugee camp? This is not New York, Geneva, or Paris, where people have the privilege of choosing neighborhoods, schools, jobs, or even countries of residence.
For Palestinians, the occupier decides: where they are born, where they live, where they can or cannot relocate. Entire generations are confined to the same camps, towns, or villages, with mobility dictated by checkpoints, military orders, and residency restrictions. Daily life is governed not by free choice but by military occupation.
UNRWA knows this damn well. After all, they serve all Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. The Agency has administered Palestinian camps for decades. It knows that in such settings, “neighbors” does not mean privilege, collusion, or concealed financial ties. It means survival in cramped, controlled, and immovable living conditions. UNRWA twisted Hejab’s own social reality into a ground for unlawful dismissal, punishing a staff member for circumstances dictated by the very structures of the Israeli occupation.
These accusations rested entirely on the findings of the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS). Yet both the UNRWA Dispute Tribunal and the Appeals Tribunal observed that the Agency treated the OIOS investigation as if it were evidence itself, rather than conducting its own assessment of facts. Both UN Tribunals criticized this abdication of responsibility, underscoring that disciplinary measures must be based on established facts and not OIOS investigative conclusions that cannot withstand scrutiny.
The UNRWA Dispute Tribunal (UNRWA DT) eventually rescinded the termination, recognizing the flaws in the Agency’s decision. But when Hejab turned to the Appeals Tribunal (UNAT) seeking enhanced compensation arguing that his case was “exceptional” given the economic collapse in the occupied territories, his long unemployment, and his age close to retirement, the Tribunal dismissed his plea. It ruled that difficulty in finding another job or enduring the economic conditions of the occupied Palestinian territories did not amount to exceptional circumstances, calling them instead “routine or normal challenges.”
Such reasoning lays bare just how profoundly disconnected UNAT is from the daily realities of Palestinian life and their unimaginable suffering. While OHCHR acknowledges forced displacement, widespread killings, and economic collapse, the UN Tribunal reduces these very conditions to routine or normal challenges. I argue that the outcome reflects the cultural bias of UNAT judges, who apply Western standards of choice and mobility to a Palestinian reality defined by occupation and dispossession.
The UNAT bench applies standards shaped in and for Western contexts where mobility, career options, and social networks are taken for granted and then judges Palestinians against them.
What for a judge in New York or Geneva looks like an ‘ordinary difficulty’ is in fact the lived consequence of systemic occupation and dispossession. By erasing that difference, the Tribunal entrenches an unequal standard of justice: international staff are measured against realities of choice, while Palestinian staff are measured against conditions imposed by force.
Equally alarming was the Tribunal’s own note, in a footnote about the lack of due process, that UNRWA had asked Mr. Hejab to produce evidence while at the same time blocking his access to his UN email account, the very repository of the documents he needed to defend himself.
From my own experience, I know this is not an isolated occurrence. UNRWA and other UN entities routinely deploy this tactic under the false pretext of “data protection,” denying staff access to their records while preserving those same records for the Agency’s own use in building a case. The asymmetry of power this creates is staggering: staff are expected to fight blindfolded, while management has unfettered access to every document, communication, and confidential record. This is a deliberate erosion of any aspect of due process. Indeed, judges in previous cases have highlighted that depriving staff of access to their files tilts the balance fundamentally against them, stripping proceedings of fairness.
Not only was Mr. Hejab denied access to his own email records to mount an objective and fair defense, but management also decided it would scrutinize his private WhatsApp messages. Why should UN management have access to the personal communications of a staff member? And if such intrusion is deemed acceptable, then why are staff not given equal access to the WhatsApp messages of senior management, where real collusion and misconduct are far more likely to be revealed? The selectivity of this intrusion underscores once again how accountability flows in only one direction: downward and never toward those in positions of authority.
The case of Mr. Hejab is emblematic rather than exceptional. It illustrates a recurring structural flaw: the United Nations internal justice system applies abstract legal standards that are wholly detached from the realities of occupation, while UNRWA management manipulates those standards to eliminate staff it wishes to remove. This produces a dual regime of accountability: international staff are assessed within contexts of autonomy and mobility, whereas Palestinian staff are judged within conditions of displacement, restriction, and occupation: conditions that are then shockingly dismissed as “ordinary.” This reasoning cannot be reconciled with the principle of judicial neutrality; it constitutes the entrenchment of institutional bias, concealed beneath the veneer of legality.
UNAT judges may sit in the comfort of Geneva or New York, but they are not adjudicating cases for staff living in those contexts. They are judges of international administrative law, and many of the staff who come before them live under conditions radically different from those of their white, Western colleagues. In cases involving Palestinian staff, those conditions include occupation, forced displacement, restrictions on movement, and a daily absence of choice. To ignore this is not neutrality; it is blindness. UNAT judges must be trained to understand the cultural and political realities in which staff live and work. Without such understanding, they simply cannot adjudicate fairly. Otherwise, the system ceases to be justice at all; it becomes a bureaucracy reinforcing inequality under the cover of law.
Mr. Guy Bernard Ryder, USG for Policy and Head of the UN80 Taskforce
cc: Mr. António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations
Ms. Elinor Hammarskjold, USG for Office of Legal Affairs
Ms. Catherine Pollard, USG for Management
Mr. Courtenay Rattray, Chef de Cabinet
Mr. Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson for the Secretary-General
Subject: UN80 Early Separation Agreements – Legal Objections and Breach of the Principles of the Administration of Justice
Dear Mr. Ryder,
I write to register a formal objection to the UN80 Taskforce’s deployment of “early separation” agreements containing waiver clauses of sweeping breadth. Such provisions are inconsistent with binding jurisprudence, violate the Organization’s own regulatory framework, and are incompatible with the fundamental principles of the administration of justice as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations.
As USGs and ASGs shield themselves behind UN80 to settle personal or political scores and effect separations under the guise of budget cuts and restructuring, the Office of Human Resources has advanced further. In a calculated effort to insulate the administration from future litigation and to avoid paying higher awards before the United Nations Dispute Tribunal (UNDT) and United Nations Appeals Tribunal (UNAT), OHR has initiated the use of “agreed terminations” and “early separation packages,” thereby inducing staff to separate voluntarily in lieu of seeking judicial review.
While ostensibly framed as a matter of choice, in practice these agreements operate as legal entrapment. Staff are invited, under the pretext of “budgetary necessity”, to sign away vested rights, including those relating to pending complaints and ongoing litigation.
It is manifest that the present targets are not incidental redundancies but include staff engaged in active disputes, harassment claims, or proceedings seeking accountability from senior officials. I am personnnaly aware of several ongoing cases.
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 appears 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;”
Binding Jurisprudence
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 is likely to be a series, in which UNHCR invoked a materially identical “no-sue” clause to bar receivability. The Tribunal held:
“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 Organization’s pattern of abuse of such clauses was further confirmed 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 suppress claims and shield officials from accountability. In that case, the Tribunal ruled:
“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.”
Applicable Legal Principle
The principle emerging from the above jurisprudence is unequivocal: no private agreement, however artfully drafted or coercively negotiated, can lawfully displace obligations arising under the Charter of the United Nations, the Standards of Conduct, or the Organization’s internal regulatory framework. Any clause purporting to do so is ultra vires, null, and unenforceable.
Signing such an agreement constitutes an express waiver of rights guaranteed under the Charter:
“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.”
In light of binding jurisprudence confirming that such waiver clauses are ultra vires, null, and unenforceable, on what legal basis does the UN80 Taskforce , under your authority is promoting their use? What justification exists for requiring staff to execute instruments that, on their face, contravene established rulings of the United Nations Dispute Tribunal?
Why should staff repose confidence in the Secretary-General, the UN80 Taskforce, or the senior officials directing this initiative, when the clauses in question have already been judicially determined to be incompatible with the Organization’s regulatory framework and the fundamental principles of the administration of justice?
Demand for Immediate Remedial Action
I call upon you, the Secretary-General, and the Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs to:
• Immediately cease and desist from the use of such waiver clauses in all UN80 separation agreements, with effect from the date of this correspondence.
• Provide a formal, written undertaking that no staff member shall be required, induced, or coerced, directly or indirectly, to execute any instrument purporting to waive or extinguish rights which the United Nations Dispute Tribunal has expressly determined to be protected under the Organization’s regulatory framework.
• Initiate a comprehensive legal review of all ongoing separations being negotiated under such terms to determine their compliance with the Charter of the United Nations, the Standards of Conduct, and binding Tribunal jurisprudence, and to take corrective measures where non-compliance is established.
The administration of justice constitutes a binding legal obligation under the Charter and applicable jurisprudence; it is not subject to discretion or convenience. The continuation of this practice will further erode staff trust, compromise the integrity of the Organization’s internal justice system, and place the Secretary-General in breach of his duty to uphold and defend the Charter.
Respectfully,
Nadine Kaddoura Founder CERTIORARIS; and; former United Nations senior staff
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?
In my latest article, I explore why organizations, in this case study- UNESCO (and those in positions of authority) so often dismiss requests they deem excessive, when in fact these are routine, legitimate needs of long-serving staff, often entangled in complex personal circumstances. In doing so, the institution exposes itself to avoidable disputes and unnecessary litigation, all of which could have been averted with a more thoughtful and humane approach.
In my experience, two principles have grounded my approach to leadership and decision-making, especially in difficult environments.
First, regardless of rank or years of service, every colleague has something valuable to offer. Even those perceived as “dead weight“, a term I categorically reject, often carry within them a particular strength, insight, or passion that has simply been overlooked or underused. The key lies in identifying that niche: the area where each person is uniquely competent. I’m not speaking here about technical skills (those can be taught, acquired, replaced). I mean the subtler, often underappreciated strengths: interpersonal fluency, team adaptability, resilience in solitary roles, the need for structured routine, or a talent for chaos management. Some are neurodivergent, some need visibility, others prefer to work behind the scenes. Some need the stability of repetition; others need to be pushed into uncharted territory to thrive.
Leadership, contrary to popular management mantras, is not about “teaching” people to be different versions of yourself. That’s where things unravel. Leaders who obsess over moulding their teams in their own image fall into the predictable trap of coercive control. It begins with good intentions: coaching, “capacity-building”, a push for “standards” and ends in abuse of authority. The unspoken logic: if someone doesn’t conform to my version of performance or behaviour, I have the right to marginalize them or push them out.
Second, understanding the personal context behind performance requires more than professionalism: it requires empathy. And yes, compassion. Because work, while central to identity, does not suspend a person’s lived reality. Over time, people evolve; their private lives evolve with them. Health issues, family demands, losses, transitions: all of these bleed into the workplace whether leadership chooses to acknowledge them or not.
Too many conflicts in the workplace stem from a refusal to understand this. Leaders who lack the emotional intelligence to accommodate the realities of life outside the office will inevitably generate resistance, frustration, and yes too often litigation.
In a recent series of striking International Labour Organization Administrative Tribunal (ILOAT) judgments involving UNESCO (Nos. 5052–5056, 140th session), a long-serving P-5 staff member, after nearly three decades of service, was abruptly placed in the mobility scheme. At the time, he was undergoing a divorce and had shared custody of his minor daughter, which legally and logistically made relocation impossible. He submitted a request for deferral, citing these personal circumstances and referencing provisions in the HR Manual that allowed for such exceptions. The request was rejected without meaningful consideration.
From there, things unfolded in a way that was entirely disproportionate, but all too familiar. His post was placed in the mobility pool, and he was reassigned to Brazzaville. When that posting fell through, due to lack of host government approval, he was sent to Kingston. At no point did he refuse outright to take up the assignments. He asked for time, a short and reasonable delay to resolve matters related to his child. This was consistent with established practice and far from an exceptional request.
Instead of responding with a degree of flexibility or basic empathy, the administration treated his request as a refusal to comply and moved straight into disciplinary mode. But there was nothing to investigate: no misconduct had actually taken place. He had submitted a legitimate request to defer relocation, based on personal and legal obligations. Rather than engage with the substance of that request, management bypassed internal oversight procedures entirely. The required preliminary review by the internal oversight division never took place. No effort was made to establish whether there was any factual basis for disciplinary action, because the facts were already known and undisputed. There was no misconduct, only a difference in approach: one side asking for time, the other insisting on immediate compliance. Yet this administrative disagreement was escalated into a charge of insubordination, without even the basic procedural safeguards that a disciplinary process requires.
The senior staff member was placed on special leave and given a clear ultimatum: withdraw his internal appeals or lose his job. When he refused to capitulate, the administration followed through and terminated his appointment for alleged insubordination. The ILOAT later reviewed the case and found the entire process fundamentally flawed. The administration had bypassed its own rules, ignored the requirement for an independent investigation, and failed to meet even the minimum procedural standards for disciplinary action. The dismissal was annulled. Beyond the procedural violations, the Tribunal went further and acknowledged what the staff member had been documenting for years: a pattern of decisions and actions that amounted to institutional harassment.
Which brings us back to the central question: what could have possibly propelled the Executive Director into this kind of aggressive, adversarial stance?
Why turn a routine deferral request into a disciplinary battle? Why not pause, reflect, and acknowledge that these were genuine personal circumstances requiring a proportionate, human response?
The staff member was not challenging authority; he was simply asking for time, yet the request was recast as defiance and rapidly escalated into a full-blown disciplinary conflict.
I find it hard to believe that people begin their careers this way.
Most do not.
It is often the system itself: the absence of consequences, the unchecked authority, the culture of protecting the institution at all costs that distorts behaviour over time. The UN’s structural tolerance for impunity rewards those who bulldoze their way through dissent, override discretion, and reframe perfectly reasonable staff concerns as insubordination. Some may well have climbed the ranks by doing just that. Others may have lost their bearings along the way. But the end result is the same.
Real leadership requires the ability to see others. Many lead, but very few actually see the people they lead.
They manage outputs, they push directives, they meet deadlines, but they stop engaging with the human beings carrying the weight of the organization.
That’s where leadership breaks down. Leadership doesn’t collapse because of flawed systems or poorly written policies pr performance metrics, rather it collapses when those in charge stop recognising the people in front of them.
Which brings us to the second scenario: when leaders fail to see the value of their staff simply because they occupy a lower grade. Locked into a rigid hierarchy and their own assumptions about who is worth listening to, they operate on the belief that no one at a junior level could possibly offer insights more relevant or more useful than their own. When that mindset takes hold, the outcome is rarely constructive.
Instead of engaging, these leaders take offence. They don’t take the time to assess what is being said or consider whether it has merit. Instead, they react defensively, as if their position has been challenged. The conversation ends there. What follows is not a reasoned assessment of competing views, but a retaliatory move against someone they consider to have overstepped. Once again, what we see is a pattern of egocentric leadership where self-perception overrides sound judgment. And once again, it fails.
ILOAT Judgments No. 5057 and No. 5058 (K. v. UNESCO) perfectly capture this leadership failure.
The case concerned a long-serving G-3 level security officer at UNESCO, employed since 2002. As part of his duties, he also served as a trainer for other security staff in the use of “intermediate defense equipment,” including batons, handcuffs, and pepper spray. These certifications were initially granted following a 2016 training by an external provider and were subject to renewal every year(or every three years in the case of trainers).
Between March 2018 and October 2019, the staff member sent several emails to his supervisors, flagging the failure to organize mandatory refresher trainings, which had resulted in the expiration of the required licenses for several security officers. This created operational uncertainty within the unit, with some staff discontinuing use of the equipment, and others continuing to carry it while unsure of their legal authority to do so.
Instead of addressing the issue substantively, the administration issued the staff member a downgraded performance review, accusing him of exhibiting inappropriate behaviour and poor communication. He then filed a complaint for retaliation, which UNESCO dismissed at the preliminary review stage. The Ethics Advisor concluded that his reporting of expired weapons certifications did not constitute a protected activity under the organization’s rules.
The ILOA Tribunal disagreed, and in strong terms. It found that the staff member’s reporting of safety and compliance concerns regarding defensive equipment did fall within the scope of protected activity, even if the underlying issue resulted from deliberate internal decisions or inaction. The Tribunal emphasized that:
“The fact that the alleged breach of rules was the result of a management decision does not, in itself, exclude the possibility that reporting such a breach constitutes protected activity.”
This directly contradicted the Ethics Advisor’s logic and revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of what constitutes whistleblowing or protected disclosures. The Tribunal held that the decision to dismiss the retaliation complaint was unlawful, and that the complainant had suffered moral harm as a result of the premature closure of his case without proper investigation.
The Tribunal also noted that UNESCO did not contest the factual basis of the staff member’s claims: the licenses had indeed expired, and the required trainings had not taken place. Yet, rather than engage with the substance of the concern: operational safety, legal risk, and staff uncertainty, the organization focused its efforts on discrediting the messenger.
This second case illustrates the same failure from a different angle: one rooted in hierarchy and ego. Here, the staff member wasn’t in a senior role. He was G-3 level, a security officer. But he knew his work, and he raised legitimate, operational concerns about the expiry of weapons certifications and the risks of having security personnel uncertain about their authority to use defensive gear. He flagged it calmly, through internal channels, over a sustained period. And yet, rather than acknowledge the seriousness of the issue, even the Tribunal called it “worrisome”, his supervisor took offence.
Because the feedback came from someone at a lower grade, it was treated not as input but as interference. The issue was never evaluated on its own terms and instead was buried under performance reviews and process language. His communications were suddenly labeled inappropriate, his tone scrutinized, and the focus shifted from the substance of what he was saying to the discomfort it caused his supervisor.
This is the kind of reaction that plays out when leadership becomes entangled in its own rank, title, and entitlement. And once again, it fails. What followed was a series of retaliatory actions under the cover of formal processes. The failure here was the inability to recognize that valid concerns can come from any level, and that leadership requires the ability to engage with what is being said, regardless of who says it.
In both cases, the outcome was the same: escalation, legal defeat, and reputational damage. All of it avoidable.
What’s difficult to reconcile is the gap between the values the UN and the wider humanitarian sector claim to uphold, and the behaviours that are tolerated, and at times rewarded, at senior levels. This is a non-profit environment. By definition, our work is meant to be grounded in higher principles: dignity, justice, integrity, inclusion. Unlike the private sector, where abuse and retaliation are often concealed behind NDAs and threats of blacklisting, our legitimacy depends on the consistent application of the very values we put on our posters, in mission statements, and in every new cycle of leadership and behavioral competency frameworks. But these values cannot just exist on paper or in strategy rollouts. They have to be seen in how we treat people every day.
So if you’re in a leadership role, the one question worth asking is this: do you actually see the people around you? And if you do, in what light?
Leadership begins with the ability to see the people in front of you. If you can’t do that, then what exactly are you leading?
The staff in Geneva and New York and the legal apparatus that shields them have long treated field staff as second class. And when I speak about field staff, I don’t mean only those in the Field Service category, but all staff serving in field duty stations, particularly in conflict zones as opposed to those based at headquarters.
There is a long-term, persistent, unspoken hierarchy in the United Nations, one that consistently favors those who remain anchored at headquarters over those who serve on the frontlines. And yet, the staff who choose to go where the work is urgent and consequential are the ones most often overlooked, sidelined, or denied recognition. The core of the UN’s mandate (humanitarian response, conflict resolution, capacity-building, protection) takes place far from its polished conference rooms and ceremonial declarations.
It is precisely the staff who choose to serve in these demanding, high-stakes environments who remain the most invisible. Their contributions are undervalued, their careers stunted, their entitlements often contested or denied. Take, for example, something as basic as the education grant: the speed with which it is processed and reconciled for staff based at headquarters compared to those in the field ( or worse, those handled through regional service centers) is staggering.
I chose to go to the field on my own. What I experienced there was an eye-opener: it reshaped how I think, how I decide, and how I lead.
No headquarters posting could have offered the same clarity or urgency. Nowhere else are your judgment, decisiveness, and ability to act under pressure tested as relentlessly as in the field. You don’t have the comfort of lengthy meetings or the time to craft elaborate presentations that may impress on paper but do little on the ground.
In field operations, your effectiveness is measured by what you can deliver, immediately and often with minimal support. Ingenuity thrives in environments where resources are scarce and systems are unfinished; you don’t wait for ideal conditions; you create solutions, adapt in motion, and keep the mission moving forward. This is especially true in start-up or emergency settings, where nothing is in place and yet everything is expected of you from day one.
The stakes are high: lives, missions, and credibility hang in the balance. And amid the urgency, there is a rare sense of collective focus, where staff rally around outcomes that actually matter. Nowhere else in the UN system is it possible to build capacity, deliver impact, and scale solutions as rapidly and meaningfully as in the field.
Back in 2006, then-Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown spoke candidly about the future of the Organization. He said the next generation of UN leaders would emerge not from behind desks in New York or Geneva, but from the field: from those who had seen operations up close, made hard decisions in real time, and stood accountable for outcomes, not optics.
In 2010, the Secretariat went further and codified this vision by making service in an “E” category hardship duty station a formal requirement for eligibility to apply for D-1 and above positions. For a moment, it seemed the Organization might finally begin to recalibrate the imbalance between headquarters and the field to acknowledge the depth of professional expertise and leadership forged far from the flag-lined corridors of the Palais des Nations and First Avenue.
In reality, the gap between field and headquarters has only grown wider with time. Year after year, we continue to see appointment exercises and eligibility determinations that sideline staff who served in conflict zones or under non-Secretariat entities, in favor of those who remained stationed at headquarters.
The most recent judgment, UNDT/2025/031 is as shocking as it is revealing. It shows how UN Headquarters in New York went a step further in institutionalizing discrimination against staff who served in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, by deciding that their service would not count toward eligibility, simply because UNRWA does not apply the exact same set of rules and regulations as the UN Secretariat.
Yes, you read that right.
You could serve for years under fire and bombing in Gaza, with displaced communities in Syria, or in volatile East Jerusalem and UNHQ can simply decide that none of it counts.
Your service, your hardship, your UN badge?
All of it erased the moment you ask for what you’ve rightfully earned. Why? Because UNRWA, according to DMSPC and its legal architects in New York, does not apply the exact same set of staff rules and regulations as the Secretariat.
So yes, you were in the UN system. But no, your service doesn’t accrue. Your years don’t qualify. Your experience doesn’t translate. And then you’re strangely told by UNHQ that you belong somewhere in between: not quite inside, not quite outside. And it’s because, you see, the rules are not exactly the same. That technicality, they claim, is enough to erase your years in the OPT which, in truth, were the most challenging, meaningful, and defining part of your entire UN career.
A few weeks ago, the United Nations Dispute Tribunal issued Judgment UNDT/2025/031, confirming how this practice is being applied in concrete terms.
The case concerned a Chief of Section working with OCHA in Geneva who had spent a significant part of her career serving in the Occupied Palestinian Territories first with UNOPS, then with UNRWA, before joining the Secretariat. Her record was emblematic of everything the UN claims to value: mobility, hardship postings, functional versatility, service across agencies. At the point of review, the Administration took the position that her years of service with UNOPS and UNRWA were to be excluded entirely. They were not credited toward the required five years of continuous service, nor were they included in the calculation of eligibility points. In effect, the most substantial and high-risk phase of her UN career was treated as if it had no legal weight whatsoever.
This decision effectively disqualified over a decade of service in the UN system based on the assertion that UNOPS and UNRWA were not governed by exactly the same set of UN Staff Regulations and Rules. The legal reasoning ignored the very instrument that governs inter-agency mobility: the Inter-Organization Agreement (IOA), which clearly states that service transferred or seconded between organizations in the UN common system must be treated as if it were performed in the receiving entity. In short, the Administration applied selective readings of policy to exclude her entire trajectory, while continuing to reward those who had never once left the comfort of headquarters.
The Tribunal found the decision unlawful. It held that the refusal to recognize the applicant’s service with UNOPS and UNRWA violated the IOA, misapplied the Secretariat’s own administrative issuances, and deprived her of points to which she was clearly entitled. The Tribunal’s findings leave no ambiguity. The Administration’s refusal to credit her service was not only unsupported by the applicable legal framework , it effectively penalized her for having served in some of the UN’s most complex and high-risk duty stations. But, this isn’t new…
Under Ban Ki-moon’s leadership, the Organization launched one of its most aggressively marketed internal campaigns: mobility and gender parity. The Secretariat issued bulletin after bulletin on the need for more women in senior leadership roles and the importance of posting to hardship duty stations. It was framed as a new era : a system-wide policy shift aimed at leveling the playing field and rewarding those who took the difficult assignments. On paper, it looked like change but in reality, it became another layer of empty rhetoric used to justify selective recognition.
I went to Syria voluntarily. It was a start-up mission at the peak of the war. We were operating under bombing raids, chronic insecurity, limited access, and no infrastructure. I was one of the very few senior women in the field at the time, tasked with building systems from scratch while trying to protect staff and maintain operational continuity in a collapsing environment. It was the clearest expression of what the UN says it values: service, courage, competence, and commitment to mission.
And yet, when the permanent appointment exercise came, the officials in OHRM (now DMSPC) together with the legal advisors at UNHQ, determined that I would not be granted the permanent appointment, relying on the claim that a prior shift in my contractual status from a 100 series to a 300 series appointment rendered me ineligible, despite the fact that I met every requirement, including geographic mobility, language proficiency, sustained performance, and service in a Category E duty station..
I never placed much value on the permanent appointment. Years earlier, I had willingly given up a stable 100-series fixed-term contract to take on a far less secure 300-series appointment because the work mattered more than the contractual security. But when the Administration later denied me the permanent appointment invoking baseless arguments and disregarding the very eligibility framework it had put in place, the issue became one of principle.
The Administration understood that their position would not withstand judicial scrutiny. A contested proceeding would have exposed the disconnect between policy and practice: a senior woman, deployed to Syria under daily shelling, fulfilling every requirement for eligibility, yet denied a permanent appointment at the height of a public campaign promoting gender parity and field mobility. The reputational risk was evident. The decision was quietly reversed before the matter could proceed to the Tribunal not out of acknowledgment of wrongdoing, but to avoid the consequences of having that contradiction examined in a public forum.
That was in 2010.
One would think the Organization had evolved since then that at the very least, it had learned from its administrative missteps. But it hasn’t. The very same officials who tried to block my appointment in 2010 are still sitting in UNHQ today, in the same chairs, behind the same walls, producing nothing of value while field staff carry the actual weight of this system. And now, they are attempting to deprive another woman one who served in the occupied Palestinian territory, in Gaza and Jerusalem, under UNOPS and UNRWA of the same rights they tried to withhold from me.
While they remain in place, untouched, unexamined, and shielded from accountability, it is field staff who have carried the weight of the Organization’s work.
They are the ones who have built trust across fractured communities, negotiated access under threat, coordinated humanitarian response in collapsing systems, and operated in proximity to real, daily risk.
This article does not call into question the integrity or dedication of staff serving in headquarters duty stations ( I myself have served in both New York and Geneva). The issue lies squarely with those in positions of authority: the decision-makers in operations, policy, and legal offices, who continue to uphold and reproduce practices that systematically disadvantage those who served where the UN’s presence was most needed.
Just days after the OCHA/Geneva ruling, a second judgment UNDT/2025/041 followed. The Tribunal ruled in favor of a staff member based in Nairobi and later deployed to Somalia, finding that the Administration had unlawfully excluded his years of Secretariat service during a secondment from UNICEF to UNEP when assessing his eligibility for a continuing appointment. The decision was rescinded.
What comes next is already in motion. A wave of suspension of action requests, many of which have already been registered with the Management Evaluation Unit and the UN Dispute Tribunal, will contest non-renewals and terminations triggered by the highly dubious UN80 review exercise.
And brace yourselves, because once again, the staff who will bear the brunt of these administrative purges are none other than field personnel or, as UNHQ prefers to label them, staff “serving in entities that do not apply the exact same set of Staff Rules and Regulations.”
You could serve in Gaza, Mogadishu, or Aleppo but if your contract wasn’t minted at HQ, good luck proving you exist.
Apparently, you can survive mortar fire, but not a footnote in ST/AI/2012/3.
⚠️ Trigger Warning: This post contains references to mental illness, psychiatric treatment, and the public disclosure of confidential medical records.
In what can only be described as a fundamental breach of the principles of due process, medical confidentiality, and dignity in adjudication, the United Nations Dispute and Appeals Tribunals (UNDT and UNAT) have entered dangerous territory: staff members who bring forward claims of moral harm are now being required to submit detailed medical evidence to support their case including psychiatric evaluations, therapy notes, and, in several instances, we have seen the records of the exact names of anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medications that staff members are taking. These records are not sealed and are quoted verbatim in publicly available judgments, often alongside the full names of the staff members concerned.
According to UNDT/UNAT the question of what constitutes moral injury justifying an award of compensation and what kind of evidence is sufficient or necessary to prove such injury was settled in Kallon 2017-UNAT-742:
“compensation may only be awarded for harm, supported by evidence. The mere fact of administrative wrongdoing will not necessarily lead to an award of compensation under Article 10(5)(b) of the UNDT Statute. The party alleging moral injury (or any harm for that matter) carries the burden to adduce sufficient evidence proving beyond a balance of probabilities the existence of factors causing harm to the victim’s personality rights or dignity, comprised of psychological, emotional, spiritual, reputational and analogous intangible or non- patrimonial incidents of personality.”
While in the past medical records were occasionally submitted to support claims of moral harm, they have now become the exclusive evidentiary standardfor awarding moral damages. The Tribunals have progressively adopted an evidentiary model that mirrors civil tort litigation, requiring formal psychiatric diagnoses and compelling the claimant to demonstrate a direct causal link between their mental health condition and the contested administrative decision.
In theory, this may appear aligned with principles of fairness and proportionality. In practice, it has translated into an invasive and burdensome standard of proof that disregards the psychological vulnerability of United Nations staff members many of whom are already navigating the aftermath of harassment, retaliation, abuse of authority, or abrupt termination.
The trend is particularly visible in recent UNDT jurisprudence, which has moved aggressively toward rejecting moral harm claims absent clinical documentation. Meanwhile, the Administration often contests even the most robust medical reports, challenging diagnoses, questioning causality, and in some cases, casting doubt on the credibility of the staff member’s treating physician. All of this, it must be said, for what is often a nominal and symbolic award of moral damages.
What is particularly alarming is that these medical records, ordinarily protected under doctor–patient privilege and recognized universally as confidential are neither submitted under seal nor reviewed ex parte. Instead, they are routinely cited verbatim in public judgments, including diagnostic labels, medication regimens, therapy histories, and treatment timelines, all tied explicitly to the staff member’s full name. The implications are profound: staff members are being forced to choose between their right to seek redress and the irreversible exposure of their most intimate medical history. This practice does not reflect a restorative approach to justice; rather, it institutionalizes procedural retraumatization within the framework of the UN’s internal justice system.
In 2022, I published a compendium documenting all moral damages awarded by the UN Dispute and Appeals Tribunals between 2010 and 2022, a first-of-its-kind resource mapping how the UN’s own judicial bodies acknowledged psychological harm inflicted on staff through unlawful administrative action. That body of research revealed a consistent pattern of decisions confirming moral injury, yet without any corresponding accountability for the perpetrators.
This month, I completed the updated edition of that compendium attached below, now covering the period from 2010 through June 2025 (15 years of moral damages in the UN). The research process revealed what can only be described as a disturbing evolution of jurisprudence. In reviewing the most recent judgments, I encountered not only a sharp reduction in the number of moral damage awards, but a series of rulings whose factual and evidentiary treatment of staff mental health conditions defies both legal logic and basic human decency.
Between 2023 and 2025, the trend has become unmistakable. Moral damages, already inconsistently awarded, have now been all but eliminated. In 2024, not a single judgment awarded compensation for moral damages, including in cases where staff succeeded on the merits. On paper, this decline might suggest an improvement in workplace conditions or a reduction in harmful decisions. It is nothing of the sort. The data reflects not progress but regression due to a judicial environment increasingly hostile to acknowledging trauma, and increasingly unwilling to grant redress for it.
Judicial Retrenchment and the Contestation of Psychological Harm
This marked decline cannot be attributed to an absence of harm, but rather to two interrelated developments within the internal justice system that have significantly narrowed the path to compensation for moral damages.
1. Invasive Evidentiary Requirements (Reinforced)
Beyond this shift in evidentiary standards, what is increasingly evident is the practical chilling effect it has imposed on staff. Faced with the prospect of submitting deeply personal psychiatric records, often including diagnostic notes, medication regimens, and therapy histories, many staff members are opting not to seek moral damages at all. This is particularly true for survivors of sexual harassment, whistleblowers, and those wrongfully terminated or unlawfully reassigned and retaliated against, for whom exposure of mental health records carries not only reputational risk but personal retraumatization.
Crucially, these records are not protected through sealed submissions or ex parte review. Instead, they are admitted into evidence and then cited verbatim in publicly accessible judgments. The disclosure of such sensitive information, without redaction and often alongside the staff member’s full name, violates the most basic norms of privacy and procedural dignity. The result is that those most in need of protection are left without remedy, silenced not by legal weakness but by an evidentiary process that demands they trade justice for exposure.
2. Systemic Refusal to Anonymize Judgments
Closely linked to the evidentiary burden is the UN Tribunals’ continued refusal to anonymize judgments even where the content concerns severe psychological harm, family trauma, or sensitive medical conditions. The identity of the staff member is routinely disclosed, regardless of whether they prevailed in their appeal or were vindicated after years of reputational damage.
While the General Assembly has endorsed the principle of transparency in the publication of judgments, this mandate was never intended to come at the cost of retraumatizing victims. In practice, the current approach disproportionately affects staff members, particularly those who win their cases, while shielding the individuals or systems responsible for the harm.
It is difficult to argue that publishing the names of victims serves any institutional purpose. On the contrary, it has become a deterrent. Staff who might otherwise challenge unlawful conduct are dissuaded from doing so for fear of public exposure, stigmatization, or digital permanence. At a minimum, those who prevail in their appeals should not be penalized by having their identities permanently associated with intimate psychiatric disclosures. Justice must protect, not expose.
The practice of anonymizing sensitive judicial decisions is not novel; it is well-established in other international tribunals such as the ILOAT and the European Court of Human Rights, particularly where reputational and psychological harm are at issue. The UN Tribunals must now align with these standards not only as a matter of consistency, but as a matter of basic decency.
A close review of recent jurisprudence reveals an increasingly adversarial posture by the Administration, namely, the Secretary-General’s legal apparatus, toward the recognition and compensation of moral harm, even in cases involving clear vulnerability, trauma, and institutional failure.
One particularly distressing example is UNDT/2024/003 Guezel appealed to UNAT 2025-UNAT-1531 a case involving a deceased UN staff member who died in service, leaving behind a semi-literate widow and an 11-year-old daughter in a remote village in Laos. The family, entirely dependent on the staff member, had minimal contact with the Organization and no functional knowledge of UN procedures or official languages. It took over two and a half years for the Administration to process their ABCC compensation claim. During this period, the widow received no meaningful communication, only vague assurances that the matter was under review.
The family brought a claim for compensation for the undue delay and sought moral damages for the psychological harm they endured. The child, who was the first to find her father’s lifeless body, was deemed too traumatized to testify. Nevertheless, the Tribunal found the facts sufficiently grave to award compensation. In response, the Administration appealed, arguing that the family’s moral harm was “not corroborated by reliable independent evidence”because no psychiatric reports were submitted.
In a rare and important intervention, the UNAT in Judgment 2025-UNAT-1531 rejected the Administration’s challenge. It affirmed the UNDT’s reliance on a handwritten letter submitted by the widow, which provided a restrained yet deeply affecting account of the family’s suffering. The Appeals Tribunal noted:
“Despite the personal sufferings it described, the letter was polite, objective and restrained in its tone… Its unchallenged content amply justified the award of moral damages, and we will not interfere with this award or its amount.”
Significantly, the UNAT went further, acknowledging that “the failure to seek medical attention for mental health was caused by cultural beliefs,” and explicitly recognized that factors such as limited education, environment, and social norms must inform the Tribunal’s assessment of evidence. It reaffirmed that moral harm may be corroborated through alternative forms of proof, not solely medical documentation.
These are the kinds of judgments the system urgently needs more of: balanced, context-sensitive, and grounded in a humane understanding of evidence. Yet regrettably, they remain the exception when they should be the norm. This approach to moral harm should not be a rare judicial act of empathy, it should be the default standard across all moral damages claims
In another case, UNDT/2025/021, a survivor of the 2020 Beirut Port explosion, whose PTSD diagnosis was not disputed in principle was subjected to intense evidentiary scrutiny by the UN’s legal team, which contested the extent of her trauma and succeeded in having her entire psychiatric history including medication details published in the judgment. The most intimate aspects of her mental health are now permanently accessible in the public domain.
These are not isolated cases. I am personally aware of a former UNHCR staff member who withdrew her complaint of sexual harassment when the UNDT refused to grant her anonymity, despite the sensitivity of the allegations. The cost of pursuing redress was simply too high.
In case after case, moral harm is treated as irrelevant, excluded from consideration regardless of the circumstances. The process discourages the vulnerable, retraumatizes survivors, and treats mental suffering as collateral to litigation. It is a system where the burden of proof has become a weapon, and justice, a deterrent.
Restoring the Duty of Care: Jurisprudential and Procedural Reforms
If the UN Tribunals are unwilling to revise their evidentiary threshold in the immediate term, they must, at a minimum, adopt protective procedural measures during a transition period.
One urgent reform is to allow medical records supporting claims of moral harm to be submitted ex parte. These documents, often containing the most intimate details of a staff member’s psychological state, should never be cited in open judgments, let alone quoted verbatim. These documents are not policy arguments. They are human evidence of institutional failure and must be treated with the corresponding degree of care and discretion.
Moreover, the Tribunals must recognize that psychological harm does not always manifest within the narrow timeframe of litigation. Many staff members develop PTSD, depression, or anxiety after the conclusion of proceedings, even after winning their cases. The notion that unlawful termination, reassignment, retaliation, or sexual harassment can occur without psychological consequence is not only clinically unsound: it is legally absurd.
If a staff member has succeeded in proving such violations, the presumption of resulting harm should follow naturally. Requiring further proof of what is self-evident reflects a detachment from lived reality and an insensitivity to the nature of trauma itself.
How can a staff member succeed in proving that they were unlawfully terminated, harassed, reassigned without justification, or subjected to retaliatory investigations only to be told that this is not, in itself, evidence of harm? The Tribunal’s approach effectively severs the link between the violation and its natural psychological consequences, as if institutional abuse can exist without emotional fallout.
Who among us could be summarily dismissed, publicly discredited, blacklisted from future employment, and dragged through years of litigation and emerge psychologically unscathed? The causal relationship between systemic injustice and mental distress is both medically recognized and self-evident.
Yet the Tribunal demands granular proof of that suffering:, diagnosis by diagnosis, pill by pill, as though trauma must be itemized to be believed.
It is time for the UN Tribunals to fundamentally change their approach. In cases involving unlawful termination, harassment (including sexual harassment), retaliation or abuse, where the staff member prevails, moral damages should be awarded automatically. The burden must not fall on the staff member to further justify that which the facts of the case already imply.
The Way Forward: Immediate Procedural Reforms
The Tribunal system must urgently align itself with international best practices, such as those adopted by the ILOAT and adopt procedural safeguards that center the dignity of staff. The following reforms are both feasible and overdue:
Anonymize all UNDT and UNAT judgments by default, particularly those involving medical harm, sexual harassment, or whistleblower retaliation. There is no defensible legal rationale for exposing the identity of a staff member who has already suffered harm. Transparency must not come at the expense of protection.
Permit the submission of medical records ex parte and shield such documents from publication. These records are not legal arguments; they are deeply personal evidence of suffering. Requiring staff to disclose them publicly compounds harm and deters rightful claims.
Acknowledge the delayed onset of moral harm. The current requirement that staff demonstrate contemporaneous trauma fails to account for the well-documented reality that mental health deterioration often occurs after the legal battle has ended. Any credible adjudicative system must reflect this understanding in its reasoning.
What is particularly troubling and fundamentally contradictory is how the jurisprudence of international administrative law has, for decades, clearly articulated the Organization’s duty of care toward its staff. From UNAdT Judgments No. 872, Hjelmqvist (1998) and No. 1273, Aidenbaum (2006), to ILOAT Judgment No. 402, In re Grasshoff (1980) and ADB Decision No. 5, Bares (1995), the principle has been consistent: employers especially international organizations bear a legal and moral obligation to safeguard the dignity, well-being, and mental health of their personnel.
Yet, despite this established body of jurisprudence, the UN Tribunals today systematically fail to apply the same logic when it comes to moral damages. Nowhere is this contradiction more visible than in the Tribunal’s refusal to presume harm in cases of serious rights violations, and its insistence on invasive evidentiary thresholds that effectively negate the very concept of duty of care.
In Judgments No. 1125, Mwangi (2003) and No. 1204, Durand (2005), the former UN Administrative Tribunal held that staff regulation 1.2(c) codifies a duty of protection with the force of a general principle of law. In Mwangi, the Tribunal was unequivocal:
“Even where such obligations are not expressly spelled out in the Regulations and Rules, general principles of law would impose such an obligation, as would normally be expected of every employer. The United Nations, as an exemplary employer, should be held to higher standards and the Respondent is therefore expected to treat staff members with the respect they deserve, including respect for their well-being.”
And yet, that respect is nowhere to be found in the current treatment of staff seeking redress for psychological harm. The UN speaks of duty of care in policy papers, mental health strategies, and inter-agency frameworks but in the courtroom, it retreats to technicalities, burdens of proof, and bureaucratic cruelty.
Until the UN Tribunals implement the most basic reforms from protecting medical confidentiality to restoring the presumption of harm and anonymizing victims by default, UN staff seeking justice will continue to face a brutal choice: suffer in silence, or disclose their most intimate psychiatric records to the system that failed them.
Submit Your Antidepressants to the Judge: UN Justice in 2025
Last week, the UNDT issued a damning judgment, UNDT /2025/039, Applicant vs Secretary-General which will no doubt have the UN administration pursuing them like hell at the UNAT in an effort to reverse it.
Three bombshell findings before we dive into the details:
A senior staff member who dared to raise the alarm about UNJSPF investment policies (policies that resulted in the loss of millions in staff pension money) was swiftly retaliated against and terminated. So even when your warning turns out to be spot on, you’re the one who gets punished for daring to speak up.
The very rules that require staff to uphold “the highest standards of efficiency, competence and integrity,” and to promptly report breaches of UN regulations and rules, are the same ones the UN uses against you when it wants to terminate you.
Once again, we’re reminded that OIOS considers itself above the law, routinely defying Tribunal orders for evidence disclosure under the classic pretext of “operational independence.”
But that’s not all.
In this case, we also learn that OIOS’s so-called “seizure of IT equipment” and subsequent “forensic search” was nothing more than a fishing expedition into a staff member’s most private data: personal WhatsApp messages included in a desperate attempt to fabricate misconduct when there was none.
We’re reminded yet again: the Ethics Office’s so-called “protection against retaliation” policy is worthless. It’s time to shut it down alongside the equally hollow Ombudsman’s office. And while we’re at it, the newly created anti-racism office, which excels in PR but is functionally useless.
This case exposes the brutal extent of the Secretary-General’s defense apparatus led by OIOS and the Office of the Secretary-General itself, which will go to extraordinary lengths to protect its own, even if it means destroying careers and staff members’ personal lives.
A former Senior Investment Officer for Fixed Income with the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund (UNJSPF), holding a continuing appointmentin the Office of Investment Management (OIM) and with over 17 years of UN service, was terminated shortly after raising concerns regarding potential losses of millions of dollars in UNJSPF investments.
The staff member had joined UNJSPF in 2008, right in the middle of one of the worst financial crises in modern history, and was entrusted with managing fixed-income portfolios as head portfolio manager. But things started shifting dramatically once a new Representative of the Secretary-General (RSG) came into office. Not only were the staff member’s responsibilities narrowed, but a new Director at the D-1 level was appointed, effectively sidelining his authority.
Despite this, the staff member and a few OIM colleagues submitted a joint complaint against the RSG, reporting possible misconduct. Why? Because the RSG had unilaterally altered the benchmark for the fixed-income portfoliomultiple times. When the staff member raised concerns about these shifts especially as the portfolio’s value began nosediving, he was told this was “not his concern.”
Never mind that the fund was hemorrhaging money and that this was the money of all United Nations staff members.
The Fund had been delivering strong returns for years, well above industry benchmarks. But all that changed under the new RSG. His controversial decisions, taken unilaterally and without proper oversight, led to massive losses. According to the staff member’s own testimony, the reckless shift in policy triggered a 20% drop in the Fund’s value by early 2020.
As the Tribunal plainly stated:
“This courageous action to protect the Pension Fund is at the center of this case.”
The judgment recounts how, in 2019, the benchmark for Fixed Income was changed without an external study, prompting the sell-off of U.S. Treasuries in favor of mortgage-backed securities and emerging market debt, both of which became illiquid and incurred heavy losses during the 2020 financial crash.
To the staff member’s credit, these very concerns were later acknowledged in the OIOS Governance Report, which was also shared with the Secretary-General himself. The Report eventually led to the resignation of the RSG.
But rather than embracing the whistleblowers who’d done the right thing who had, in fact, saved the UN from further collapse, the Administration instead launched a campaign of retaliation.
The message was unmistakable: challenge authority, and you’ll be taken down.
OIOS were sent in, deliberately, to make an example out of the staff member and his colleagues. What followed was retaliation, plain and simple.
And that’s when the real operation began.
The judgment recounts how the staff member described the creation of an OIOS “Task Force” within the Division of Investigations, followed by a blanket seizure of IT equipment from OIM staff. According to his testimony, this was nothing more than an excuse to dig indiscriminately into private emails and text communications, including conversations between colleagues who had reported misconduct.
Although the OIOS investigation turned up no direct evidence of wrongdoing against the staff member, a case was still manufactured “…from retrieving other people’s private communications and holding him responsible for their thoughts and words.”
And that’s exactly what happened.
Private conversations. WhatsApp messages. Criticisms of failed investment strategies. Thoughts shared in trust with colleagues. All of it was weaponized, used as ammunition in a fabricated misconduct case.
OIOS and the Administration claimed they had the right to conduct these forensic “seizures.” But this was nothing but a forensic fishing expedition. A desperate hunt to twist vague criticisms and private exchanges into something they could punish. And what did they come up with?
That the staff member had voiced concerns about the RSG’s policies. That he’d shared frustrations in a private chat. That he criticized senior officials in encrypted messages outside of work channels.
That’s it.
Since when is private criticism misconduct? Since when are staff not allowed to have an opinion let alone express it privately?
Is this where we’ve arrived? That under the pretext of “technology,” OIOS can dig through our phones and label frustration as insubordination? Where is the balance of arms?
Because if we flipped the script and pulled the WhatsApp threads of senior UN officials, we know what we’d find. And it wouldn’t survive scrutiny.
Private Discourse is Not Misconduct.
So how does a private discussion group where staff warned about disastrous policy shifts, which were later proven right become a basis for termination? Especially when those warnings were vindicated, and the RSG ended up resigning?
The Tribunal itself noted:
“… a staff member should, at the same time, also be allowed to privately express his or her frustrations concerning a supervisor with a colleague — otherwise, the dissatisfaction risks festering and may further damage an already difficult work relationship.”
Even more pointedly:
“Indeed, it would not have shown integrity to allow the impact of misguided policies to continue. By standing up to the policies that may have cost the United Nations great loss, the Applicant also made a positive contribution to the Organization…his effort to stop the policies would have helped to institute change before the losses to the relevant funds reaped much greater damage to the Organization.”
There it is.
A senior staff member who did exactly what the UN’s own rules compel him to do: stand up, speak up, protect the Organization’s interests, was instead punished for it
Let’s go a step further.
The administration’s response went further than mere retaliation. In the formal allegations, it cited the very provisions of the Staff Regulations and Rules that require staff members to uphold the highest standards of integrity, act in the interests of the Organization, report misconduct, and maintain professional conduct.
Yet, it was precisely in fulfilling these obligations that the staff member found himself targeted. His actions raising legitimate concerns over policies that risked substantial financial harm to the Pension Fund fell squarely within the scope of his duties under the UN Charter and the applicable regulatory framework.
Instead of being recognized as the lawful discharge of a staff member’s obligations, these actions were recharacterized as misconduct. The very norms designed to protect the Organization were used selectively and punitively to silence internal dissent. This represents a fundamental distortion of the regulatory framework’s purpose.
And it gets worse.
Crucial evidence, documents that could have fully exonerated the staff member and his colleagues was intentionally withheld by OIOS and the UN Administration. By Order No. 002 (NY/2025) dated 16 January 2025, the Tribunal ordered the Administration to disclose two OIOS “special review” reports. The staff member had specifically requested production of these documents.
The Administration refused.
The excuse? OIOS’s operational independence.
Let that sit for a moment.
When it suits them, OIOS is above orders from the UN Dispute Tribunal. Above accountability. And above the rights of staff members to a fair defense.
This case is exceptional in that exculpatory evidence, which clearly showed that the staff member and his OIM colleagues were acting in the Organization’s best interest, was actively suppressed. Why? To push a pre-manufactured narrative that the sm’ communications were somehow inappropriate or conspiratorial.
The truth is, the suppressed reports confirmed that the concerns about the benchmark changes were valid. That the losses were real. That the whistleblowers had been right all along.
The refusal to disclose the requested OIOS reports, despite a clear Tribunal order, cannot be dismissed as a procedural irregularity. It reflects a deliberate attempt to shield the Administration from institutional accountability and to preserve a narrative that excludes exculpatory evidence. The suppression of these documents amounts to an obstruction of the Applicant’s right to a fair and transparent adjudication of his claims.
Despite everything, the Administration still claimed the staff member had breached public trust.
But even here, the Tribunal pushed back hard:
“The Respondent alleges a breach of the public trust…. as professionals, the group including the Applicant had a duty to agitate against policies which they correctly predicted would cost the pension investment fund severe losses.”
This distinction is critical. Expressing dissent in relation to policy decisions that may adversely affect the financial integrity of the Organization does not constitute a breach of trust. On the contrary, it falls squarely within the duties of international civil servants, as articulated in Staff Regulation 1.2, to act with integrity and in the best interests of the Organization. The actions taken by the staff member and his colleagues raising concerns, documenting irregularities, and reporting them through internal channels were consistent with their professional obligations. That these actions resulted in retaliatory measures is indicative of a systemic failure to uphold the protections enshrined in the UN’s internal legal framework.
To make matters worse, the Tribunal noted that the Administration completely ignored the Applicant’s claim that he was a whistleblower. And in doing so, they made the process fundamentally unfair.
“The issue is not whether the outcome would have been different. But the issue is that it is not known whether there would have been a different outcome had the Applicant’s assertion of being a ‘whistleblower’ and the group’s complaint been handled in an objective and professional way which afforded an assessment of the basis of the complaint rather than dismissing it without even a comment.”
Read that again.
The Administration didn’t even acknowledge the whistleblower claim. They didn’t review it. Didn’t assess it. Didn’t comment on it.
They just dismissed it.
And where was the Ethics Office? You guessed it: Nowhere.
The Tribunal is silent on that, but we all know the drill by now. I call it the classic UN retaliation loop. Let me spell it out:
Staff member: Hello, I would like to request protection against retaliation. Ethics Office: Please fill out the protection form. We’ll review it in 45 days and please do consult with OSLA. Staff member: Ok, thank you. SM to OSLA: Hello, I want to record a conversation with the USG. He threatened me. OSLA: You don’t have the right to do that. That evidence is inadmissible in the Court. Ethics Office to SM: Your case is weak. Do you have any proof of the threats? SM: No. OSLA told me I wasn’t allowed to record the meeting. Ethics Office: Oh. Well… have you tried the Ombudsman? SM to Ombudsman: Hello, I need urgent help with retaliation. Ombudsman: Be patient. I can’t take executive action. I can only offer recommendations.
SM to Secretary-General: Your Excellency, I’m suffering retaliation because I reported misconduct. Secretary-General to SM: Dear colleague, I’m currently on mission. Please contact the Ethics Office.
That’s the system. That’s the loop. And that’s why it keeps happening.
A long-serving international female staff member at UNICEF Lana* (name changed to protect her identity) found herself trapped in an ethical and institutional nightmare after reporting sexual harassment and abuse of authority by a senior official in UNICEF’s Executive Office.
The staff member had spent 15 years in the UN system. When the sexual harassment and abuse began, she did what few dare: she filed a formal complaint with UNICEF’s internal investigative body, the Office of Internal Audit and Investigations (OIAI). A bold and principled move. Except the OIAI reports directly to the Executive Director (ED) of UNICEF. And the perpetrator? He works in the Executive Office.
So, unsurprisingly, almost predictably, the OIAI quietly closed the case and dismissed all of Lana’s allegations without proper examination. When the staff member requested a copy of the investigation closure report?
Denied.
No explanation. No legitimate reason. Just a wall of silence and impunity.
Or maybe the reason is obvious: the investigation is just flawed and in essence a lame cover-up. And they had no legal or moral grounds to dismiss the allegations. But when you are the system, you answer to no one. Technically, the staff member could challenge the decision before the UN Dispute Tribunal (UNDT). But that process takes years. And in the meantime, most staff who dare to challenge power are either sidelined, gagged or conveniently as we all know, terminated.
Which is exactly what happened to Lana.
She appealed to the UNDT, asking the Tribunal to order UNICEF to produce the investigation report. The Tribunal complied. What Lana discovered in that report was staggering: not only had the OIAI neglected to verify or properly assess her evidence, they had turned the report against her. New, completely unfounded allegations had been added: against the victim. The person who had dared to speak up was now being framed as the problem.
Then came the part that strips the UN’s “zero tolerance” policy bare: just words, no backbone.
Lana submitted new evidence. Substantial. Verifiable. She pleaded for the OIAI to reopen the case.
Lana wasn’t met with silence. Far from it.
UNICEF responded, but not with accountability, not with a re-investigation, or even a hint of integrity. What she got instead was an offer: A payout.
A price tag slapped on her silence.
In plain terms: hush money.
It was UNICEF’s Legal and HR teams who came knocking offering her a “hush money settlement”. The message was clear: erase the evidence, walk away from the Tribunal, take the money, and vanish. And let’s be honest, offers like this don’t land without quiet approval from the very top. The management didn’t want resolution. They just wanted Lana to disappear. Silence was the entire point.
To understand how deep this rot goes, one only needs to look at the internal power structure.
The perpetrator works in the Executive Office, reporting directly to the Deputy Executive Director.
The Deputy Executive Director oversees the Legal and HR Departments who offered “hush money”.
OIAI, the body supposedly tasked with impartial investigation, reports to the Executive Director.
So when Legal and HR offered hush money to Lana, it was, circumstantially, linked to the Deputy Executive Director, who also happens to be the direct supervisor of the perpetrator. Draw your own conclusions.
These reporting structures are what I’d call carefully placed buffer positions. They allow the Executive Director to claim independence in decision-making, to pretend there’s a wall between them and these departments. But let’s not kid ourselves. These walls are paper-thin. And more often than not, bad decisions especially the ones that bury accountability, are either taken or, at the very least, quietly cleared at the top.
Lana also turned to the Ombudsman’s Office, yet another internal mechanism that, in theory, is there to help staff navigate conflict and find resolution. But just like the Ethics Office, it turned out to be a symbolic structure with no power and no spine. She was met with the same institutional indifference, the same empty reassurances. Another dead end dressed up as support.
Every single department that is meant to protect staff, uphold ethics, and ensure accountability (Investigations, Legal, HR, Ethics, Ombudsman) is structurally subordinate to the very people they might need to investigate. In other words, they don’t just fail to protect staff: they arestructurally incapable of doing so.
In Lana’s case, it wasn’t just the Investigations Office that shut the door. It was the same office that refused to revise the new evidence she submitted, evidence they never properly reviewed in the first place and worse, they closed the case while quietly inserting new allegations against her. The victim.
And it didn’t stop there.
It was both the Legal Department and the HR Department that offered Lana a significant sum of hush money, on the condition that she withdraw the new evidence and drop her case from the UN Tribunal.
Now I’ve seen cases where a staff member is offered some kind of package: when there’s a performance issue, personality clashes, restructuring, or simply a dead end at work. These things happen. But hush money in a sexual harassment case? In the UN?
That’s a whole different story. And if this is now an accepted or even defendable practice by the UN’s legal departments, then the Secretary-General has a serious problem on his hands. Because the next time he repeats that tired line about “zero tolerance” for sexual harassment, Member States should ask him one thing:
Since when does zero tolerance come with a price tag?
It’s not just the departments supposedly tasked with upholding the UN’s zero tolerance policy that are busy handing out hush money, now it seems the practice has spread. Contagious, even. Because the latest to follow suit? None other than the UN Tribunal itself.
In an outrageous and telling move, the UN Dispute Tribunal itself: yes, the body created to be independent issued an order that referenced the General Assembly’s encouragement of alternative dispute resolution. The judge then invited the parties to “explore the possibility” of resolving the dispute amicably, without further litigation and reaching an “amicable settlement”.
Excuse me?
What kind of justice is that? Since when is hush money an “amicable resolution” to sexual harassment? What happened to accountability? To dignity? What message does this send to every other woman in the UN system who is being harassed right now?
What about Lana’s mental health?
Her safety?
Her career?
And what about the women who remain behind in that office? Do they not deserve protection from a known perpetrator? What duty of care is being exercised here by UNICEF leadership, Legal, HR or the Tribunal, for that matter?
So what does this say about the UN’s broader approach to sexual exploitation and abuse of beneficiaries? If an international staff member with 15 years of service can be bought off, silenced, and pushed out for reporting abuse, then what chance does a refugee woman or a malnourished girl in a conflict zone have?
What does it take to silence them?
A plastic toy?
A bag of rice?
Lana’s case is emblematic of a much darker truth: the UN has mastered the art of making victims disappear, while keeping perpetrators comfortably in place.
The truth is, when you’re not in power in this system; especially when you’re a woman, you are invisible. You are disposable. And if you remind them that your dignity is not for sale, they will make sure you no longer exist in the organization.
They do not see you. They do not hear you. And they certainly do not protect you.
What they do protect, at all costs, is each other.
Because let’s face it: no one is really interested in hearing your story, especially if it’s a story about sexual harassment or abuse. What they want is simple. Make it go away. Bury it. Discredit it. Pay it off. Anything but face it.
🔺 Trigger Warning: This post contains references to the 2020 Beirut explosion, psychological trauma, and institutional neglect related to mental health. Please take care while reading.
The UN’s mental health strategy looks great in PowerPoint. But when a staff member survives one of the largest explosions in history and develops PTSD, the response is to deny remote work and push her toward termination.
How exactly is UN80 supposed to reflect the UN’s so-called “duty of care” when, even in the absence of budget cuts, political hurdles, or operational constraints, a UN Under-Secretary-General is allowed to deny a telecommuting request to a staff member injured in one of the most catastrophic explosions in modern history?
Judgment UNDT/2025/021, released two days ago, details how far ESCWA’s top leadership, including its Under Secretary-General (USG) and Director of Administration went to push out a staff member injured in the 4 August 2020 Beirut blast. That explosion, one of the largest non-nuclear blasts ever recorded, killed over 200 people and injured more than 7,000, including the Applicant.
The staff member, an ESCWA official, was one of those wounded. She was medically evacuated to Germany, later relocated to the United States, and began treatment for multiple physical injuries and chronic PTSD. Initially, ESCWA authorized telecommuting to allow her to recover. Then, without warning or justification, that support was abruptly withdrawn.
By mid-2023, she was being pressured to report not to Beirut, her original duty station but to Amman, a reassignment never agreed upon, and one that directly contradicted her treating physician’s medical advice. She requested a two-month extension of her telecommuting arrangement based on her ongoing treatment plan. ESCWA’s USG flatly denied the request. With no other option, she took two months of Special Leave Without Pay.
By November 2023, she was scheduled for a medical procedure in the U.S. Her doctor submitted formal documentation recommending she remain in the U.S. for surgery, follow-up, and psychiatric care. ESCWA ignored it. Instead, its Director of Administration proposed termination:
“I understand that there was a stage where you were considering an agreed termination package, which then took a different turn. This may be a good way to go in my view, if you were still open to this. Given that a return is unlikely, I would like to suggest that we start exploring the idea of an Agreed Termination Package.”
So the solution from senior UN management to a recovering staff member with work-related injuries and PTSD was simple: take a package and go away.
In February 2024, her physician once again reiterated the medical necessity of staying in the United States. ESCWA’s response?
Demand further “evidence” and challenge the judgment of a licensed treating physician. And again, the specter of termination was raised.
Let’s call it what it is: a coordinated campaign to pressure an injured staff member into quitting. First, ESCWA withdrew remote work without cause. Then they tried to force her into a duty station against medical advice. When she refused, they made her choose between her health and her job.
The inevitable happened. Her condition worsened.
Her physician’s medical report, issued 4 February 2024, reproduced extensively in the UNDT judgment, is explicit:
“Her anxiety and depressive symptoms have recently deteriorated due to persistent challenges to resume her work and/or secure a reasonable alternative position within the UN organization. As her physical, professional, psychological, and financial security are all now threatened, [the Applicant] is decompensating psychologically. She now struggles with her sleep, low energy, and lack of motivation, in addition to having panic attacks with increasing frequency. She is now requiring psychiatric medication for the management in her symptoms, which was not previously necessary.
Given her history of chronic PTSD, it is important to prioritize both her physical and psychological well-being and ongoing treatment. I have recommended against temporary assignments outside the United States, in order for her to continue with her established medical care and access to social supports. In addition, I would advise she not resume work in Lebanon specifically due the risks of being re-traumatization.
Considering [the Applicant] is trying to recover from a significant work-related injury, it is not clear to me as to why she is being forced to decide between continuing her medical care or her job and professional livelihood within the UN.
If she prioritizes her medical and psychological care, because she is being told she cannot work remotely, then she is placed in the position of resigning from her job. And yet, she is not being given a reason as to why she cannot work remotely.”
This is how it plays out, time and again: once a staff member shows signs of illness, especially psychological trauma, the system shifts into quiet expulsion mode. The tone hardens, medical evidence is challenged, and instead of support, they are treated as a liability.
What follows is a familiar sequence: isolate, discredit, pressure, remove. It’s a pattern the Organization repeats across cases, in direct contradiction to its own duty of care framework and the principle of non-discrimination on the basis of health status.
When will the UN understand that care cannot be conditional or even performative?
You don’t get to claim duty of care when it only applies to the well.
The Tribunal had no trouble characterizing ESCWA’s conduct: “a quintessential abuse of discretion.”
Bear in mind that the same USG at ESCWA has been the subject of multiple tribunal cases, formal complaints, and accusations of abuse of authority. Staff have won those cases at the UNDT and UNAT. The Secretary-General was fully informed. And what did he do? He renewed her contract last year.
The UN’s much-publicized “duty of care” and its glossy “mental health strategy” are public relations stunts, a smokescreen to hide the routine violations happening behind closed doors. The only mental health the UN protects is that of senior officials, whose positions remain untouched no matter how many staff they trample.
And let’s not kid ourselves: this decision has a geopolitical undertone. The Executive Secretary’s home country is not without influence, and when it comes to top appointments, power trumps accountability every time. The UN’s strategy on mental health, duty of care, and trauma recovery collapses the moment power is challenged. The very policies designed to support staff are weaponized against them. The façade holds as long as no one needs the protection those policies promise.
And when UN80 arrives with its structural overhaul, this is the blueprint. Efficiency will mean elimination. Restructuring will mean displacement. Psychological welfare won’t enter the equation.
So, to every staff member bracing for the wave of reforms under UN80, know this: structural reviews won’t prioritize your well-being. They will accelerate what’s already happening: an institutional purge devoid of empathy, fairness, or legality.
