Category: Administration of Justice

Judicial Scrutiny, Counsel Conduct, and the Cost of Zero Tolerance

“Thou Shalt Always Read The Footnotes.”

A UN senior official once advised me to always pay close attention to footnotes in judgments. Footnotes are often where the real findings reside. They are discreet, carefully worded, and easy to overlook unless one understands what is at stake. They are where tribunals sometimes record patterns they are not yet prepared to confront head-on.

And in one recent sexual-harassment case, ATR v. Secretary-General of the United Nations, Judgment No. UNDT/2024/100  involving a senior official, Mr. Polinikis Sophocleous, a single footnote proved sufficiently unsettling to trigger an extraordinary mobilisation of the Organization’s vast legal machinery, ironically, not against the sexual harassment itself, but against the judges who recorded it.

What followed was extraordinary: a prolonged procedural campaign: motions, compelled disclosure, two detailed UNDT orders, one of them running to fifteen pages, and ultimately appellate scrutiny before the United Nations Appeals Tribunal: all orbiting a single footnote.

The Secretary-General’s legal counsel’s objective was plain: to prevent the UNDT from recording, even in a footnote, a pattern the Tribunal itself considered troubling, namely, that senior offenders in workplace sexual-harassment cases appear to receive more lenient disciplinary measures than lower-level staff.

Rather than directing its legal effort toward compensating the victim or addressing the remedial gap the Tribunal expressly acknowledged, the Organization concentrated its full legal force on eliminating any trace of judicial criticism, even when confined to a footnote.

This episode offers a clear, documentary view into how far the Secretary-General’s administration is prepared to go to control the narrative of accountability, including the strategic use of data submissions, jurisdictional maneuvers, and appellate escalation,  when the subject is discipline for sexual harassment, and the Organization’s professed “zero-tolerance” posture is placed under judicial light.

Most readers do not linger on a footnote. 

That is precisely why this one matters. It is a small space in a judgment that triggered an outsized institutional response and in doing so, it exposed the temper of the system of administration of justice at the United Nations today: the ferocity of its defensive litigation, and the priorities it reveals. What follows is a forensic reconstruction of how a footnote became a battleground and what that battleground reveals about power, accountability, and the UN’s own system of administration of justice.

The footnote itself is worth reproducing. It recorded what the Tribunal observed when reading the Administration’s own disciplinary record in the related Sophocleous case:

“The most astounding part of that judgment was the Administration’s concession that, although sexual harassment most frequently results in termination of a United Nations staff member, if the harassment occurred in the workplace and ‘the offender is a manager with considerable power over the affected individuals, the most frequently imposed disciplinary measure is that of demotion with deferment of at least one year of eligibility for consideration for promotion.

Reduced punishment for higher-level workplace harassers is troubling in that it seems contrary to both common sense and to the Organization’s professed zero-tolerance policy.

When the Organization refuses to disclose the discipline it imposed, the harasser returns to work, and the Organization later admits that managers frequently receive lighter punishment than others for sexual harassment, even the most gullible person must wonder about the Organization’s professed commitment to ‘zero tolerance’.”

The footnote appeared as an ancillary observation, without affecting the outcome, in a judgment where sexual harassment had been established, the victim’s credibility affirmed, and the imbalance of power expressly recognised. It nonetheless placed on the judicial record a concern that the Organization has long resisted confronting.

Within weeks, the Secretary-General’s administration mobilised its full legal apparatus to have it erased. A motion was filed invoking the Tribunal’s limited power of correction, with the Administration alleging that the Tribunal had relied on inaccurate information and had impermissibly suggested differential treatment based on grade. The Secretary-General requested the immediate deletion of the footnote.

What is notable is what the motion did not address. It did not challenge the finding of sexual harassment. It did not contest the Administration’s delay of more than three years in imposing the disciplinary measure on the perpetrator. It did not engage with the absence of compensation or the denial of information to the victim. Its sole focus was the footnote, to the point that the substance of the appeal under review all but receded from view.

The UN Dispute Tribunal did not take the bait. Rather than acceding to a request to excise judicial language on assertion alone, it treated the Administration’s allegations for what they were: a factual challenge requiring proof. In Order No. 167 (NBI/2024), the Tribunal directed the Administration to substantiate its claims with evidence. 

The Tribunal noted that the data invoked by the Secretary-General in its motion were drawn from a narrower timeframe than the disciplinary compendium on which the footnote was based, excluded entire staff categories, and conflated grade with supervisory authority. It therefore required the Administration to produce a comprehensive, searchable dataset covering all established cases of sexual and workplace harassment from at least 2009 to the present, including the offender’s grade, supervisory status, the nature of the misconduct, and the precise disciplinary measure imposed.

The exercise of disclosure proved revealing in ways the Administration had not intended. When the data was finally produced, it did not substantiate the claim advanced by the Secretary-General’s counsel. On the contrary, it exposed fundamental inconsistencies in how the Administration had framed its argument.

The dataset was neither methodologically coherent nor responsive to the Tribunal’s order. It mixed categories, relied on selective timeframes, and failed to distinguish meaningfully between grade, supervisory authority, and the nature of the misconduct.

Faced with this submission, the Tribunal did what courts are expected to do. In Order No. 21 (NBI/2025), spanning fifteen pages, it undertook its own analysis of the Administration’s material. Rather than accept the conclusions offered by the Secretary-General’s counsel, the Tribunal recalculated the figures, tested the assumptions on which they rested, and assessed the data against the very criteria the Administration itself had proposed.

The result was clear.

When properly analysed, the data supported, rather than undermined the Tribunal’s observation recorded in the footnote.

The Tribunal concluded that lower-level staff found responsible for sexual harassment were, in fact, more frequently subjected to termination than higher-level staff, who more often received lesser disciplinary measures. The pattern held even when controlling for variables that the Administration had invoked to argue the contrary. 

It is worth pausing here to recall the scale of what was set in motion: the mobilisation of the Secretary-General’s legal apparatus, the compulsory engagement of the Tribunal’s judicial resources, and ultimately appellate proceedings: all directed at a footnote, and pursued after the Administration had been placed on notice that its own data did not support the position advanced.

At that point, the factual dispute should have been at an end. The Tribunal expressly stated that its original observation had been “very accurate” and declined to withdraw it. It agreed only to minimal linguistic adjustments, removing two words to avoid characterising the Administration’s disciplinary record as a formal “concession.” The substance of the footnote remained intact. 

Rather than appealing the order directly, the Administration carried the footnote dispute into the appellate phase by appending the amended judgment to its appeal submissions to UNAT, ensuring that a single footnote would continue to occupy judicial scrutiny at the highest level.

The Appeals Tribunal dismantled the Administration’s position at its foundation (Judgment No. 2025-UNAT-1601). It refused to entertain the notion that the dispute concerned wording or presentation. Instead, it held that the Secretary-General’s approach amounted to an impermissible attempt to recast judicial reasoning through a correction procedure that does not exist for that purpose and all the more so after the Tribunal-ordered disclosure had validated the contested observation.

Having disposed of the premise, the Appeals Tribunal then addressed the consequence. In Judgment No. 2025-UNAT-1601, it held that the Dispute Tribunal had acted ultra vires in entertaining the motion for correction once an appeal against the judgment had been filed. The correction mechanism could not be used to reopen reasoning, reassess evidence, or recalibrate judicial language. On that basis, the Appeals Tribunal declared the purported amendment without legal effect and reinstated UNDT/2024/100 in its original form, including the footnote the Administration had sought to eliminate.

The result was decisive.

After months of litigation, compelled disclosure, judicial analysis, and appellate scrutiny, the position advanced by the Secretary-General’s counsel did not survive review. The footnote remained on the record, having exposed the lengths to which the Secretary-General’s administration was prepared to go to suppress judicial scrutiny in a case of substantiated sexual harassment.

But that resolution does not exhaust the questions this case raises.

How did the Secretary-General’s legal counsel reach a point where months of litigation, judicial time, and institutional resources were devoted to suppressing a footnote in a sexual-harassment case? At what point did this cease to be about legal argument and become something else? And do those responsible reflect on how such a course of action aligns with the standards of integrity, candour, and restraint they are bound to uphold?

The conduct of the Secretary-General’s counsel must be assessed against the standards governing legal representation before the UN tribunals. Article 4 of the Code of Conduct for Legal Representatives and Litigants in Person requires counsel to “maintain the highest standards of integrity” and to act “honestly, candidly, fairly, courteously, in good faith,” while also acting “diligently and efficiently” and avoiding unnecessary delay. 

Counsel acting with candour and integrity are expected to reassess their position when the evidentiary record no longer sustains it, and to conduct proceedings efficiently rather than exhaustively. The insistence on carrying this issue forward, despite the Tribunal’s findings, raises a legitimate question as to whether those standards were met in practice. 

It also raises a broader and unavoidable issue of accountability. Who bears the cost of this litigation strategy? Months of legal work, multiple judicial orders, detailed evidentiary analysis, and appellate proceedings were devoted to a footnote, all funded by the Organization.

Do Member States know that resources contributed by taxpayers were expended in this way? And who, within the system, is responsible for monitoring how the Secretary-General’s legal counsel deploys those resources when the objective is not to vindicate rights or resolve disputes, but to weaken judicial scrutiny of the administration itself.

To their credit, the UN Dispute Tribunal and the Appeals Tribunal did not yield. UNDT insisted on evidence, and UNAT ultimately reaffirmed that judicial reasoning is not subject to administrative pressure or litigation tactics designed to silence criticism. The attempt to intimidate the judiciary into retreat, even over a footnote, failed.

One might have expected such energy, and such resources,  to be reserved for combating sexual harassment.

Instead, they were spent on a footnote.

A critical legal analysis of UNDT Judge Buffa’s jurisprudence on sexual harassment, sexual assault, and sexual exploitation.

Despite having issued four separate UNDT judgments in sexual harassment, assault and exploitation cases in which he exonerated the perpetrators, rescinded their terminations, and awarded up to two years’ compensation in lieu, even after every single one was subsequently vacated by UNAT, UNDT Judge Buffa appears determined to persist in what can only be described as a judicial crusade to rehabilitate UN staff members found to have sexually harassed, sexually assaulted, raped or exploited their female colleagues.

What is glaring is not merely that UNAT has repeatedly nullified his judgments, it is that Judge Buffa continues to ignore, dismiss, or otherwise sidestep UNAT jurisprudence in areas where UNAT has already resolved the legal issue and articulated binding standards. The jurisprudential message from UNAT to Judge Buffa has been categorical. Yet Judge Buffa proceeds as though these precedents are advisory rather than binding, as though the legal reasoning of higher judicial authority is optional, and as though his personal interpretive framework supersedes the institutional legal regime.

In earlier writings dating back to 2023, I asked: What explains such a sustained departure from appellate jurisprudence? By what logic does a sitting judge repeatedly arrive at interpretations that UNAT has already rejected? How could a judge charged with administering the internal justice system arrive at legal conclusions so dramatically misaligned with the Organization’s zero-tolerance framework and repeatedly contradicted by appellate review?

At the time, I argued that the cultural priors and embedded social beliefs of the Judge, particularly those regarding gender, sexuality, power, and consent were not incidental to his rulings, but constitutive of them. I referenced the 2007 Duke Law Research Paper by Jennifer Zimbroff, which observed:

“studies of sexual harassment perception are not intended to answer whether any specific plaintiff’s circumstances satisfy the legal criteria for sexual harassment. Rather, they serve to demonstrate the potential differences with which victims, alleged perpetrators, judges, and juries perceive and consider appropriate handling of unwelcome sexualized approaches. Such studies may demonstrate how the cultural affiliations of different judges and jurors will influence their perceptions of whether sexual harassment occurred and, if so, was responded to appropriately.”

This is manifest in Judge Buffa’s judicial output. After reviewing all of Judge Buffa’s UNDT judgments in which he nullified or declined to substantiate sexual misconduct, all of which were later vacated entirely by UNAT, the pattern is unmistakable. His legal reasoning consistently reflects a viewpoint that normalizes male sexual entitlement and places the burden of reaction, resistance, articulation, and proof upon female victims. In so doing, he treats women’s testimony as unreliable, their silence as consent, their embarrassment as acquiescence, and their reluctance to report as insignificance.

In other words: his jurisprudence reveals a consistently gendered epistemology of disbelief.

The UNDT Code of Conduct for Judges requires fairness in proceedings and explicitly prohibits sexist or discriminatory conduct. UNDT Judges are obligated to uphold the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the ICCPR documents rooted in dignity, bodily autonomy, and equality before the law. Further, UNDT Judges are appointed by the General Assembly upon recommendations of the Internal Justice Council in consultation with OHR.

We therefore ask the Internal Justice Council and the General Assembly directly:

How can a UNDT judge whose judgments repeatedly erode the credibility of women reporting sexual misconduct; judgments that have systemically and consecutively been repudiated by UNAT, be said to meet the standard of impartiality and integrity expected under the UNDT judicial mandate?

Judge Buffa is not advancing the Secretary-General’s zero-tolerance framework for sexual harassment, sexual exploitation, and sexual abuse. In fact, his most recent judgment makes one reality brutally clear: the price that women pay when they report sexual misconduct is professional risk, reputational threat, and exposure to retaliation, while the alleged perpetrator is offered the jurisprudential shelter of Judge Buffa’s reasoning.

Unless a case of sexual violence meets an almost impossible standard (one approaching forensic documentation) Judge Buffa’s instinct is to clear the accused. Whether the staff member verbalized sexual comments, circulated pornographic imagery, engaged in invasive contact, or weaponized professional authority through sexual innuendo and sexual acts, Judge Buffa appears unwilling to attribute legal gravity to the act unless the violence is so explicit as to be undeniable.

May we therefore ask the Internal Justice Council and OHR: what safeguards are in place to ensure that UNDT judges, who are entrusted with adjudicating claims of harassment and abuse, do not themselves perpetuate the very attitudes that normalize such misconduct?

How can we ensure that those chosen to sit in judgment are truly aligned with the Organization’s legal commitments and ethical imperatives?

In case after case, Judge Buffa introduces interpretive thresholds that shift the burden of proof onto women and dilute the legal definition of harassment into a form of harmless social mischief.

Case No 1: Conteh v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. UNDT/2020/189

In Conteh, Conteh v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. UNDT/2020/189 (6 November 2020), Judge Buffa built a narrative of minimization around the perpetrator’s conduct. He characterized the groping, grabbing, and physical intrusion into women’s bodies as merely “episodic,” “not threatening,” and “without specific consequences,” even noting approvingly that the staff member “gave up the harassment when he understood that his ‘rude advances’ were not accepted.” In Judge Buffa’s view, the misconduct had “no impact (or at least a very limited impact) on the work environment,” and, most revealingly, he opined that “the heaviest disciplinary sanctions would perhaps have been appropriate if the investigators had found evidence that the Applicant had engaged in sexual relationships with his subordinates but they did not.”

Judge Buffa’s standard in Conteh appears to be: unless the misconduct crosses into explicit sexual intercourse, it cannot warrant dismissal. And so he rescinded the termination decision and ordered compensation in lieu.

UNAT’s response was unequivocal UNAT Judgment (appeal, reversal) Conteh v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. 2021-UNAT-1171. It found that Judge Buffa’s limitation of termination “only to instances of inappropriate sexual relationships” was “without authority or merit” and actively “undermines the broad spectrum of sexual harassment that can and does occur.” UNAT went on to reassert a core legal principle:

“there should be no requirement for the conduct to be repetitive,” and “one instance could conceptually be sufficient” for separation. Moreover, UNAT held that sexual harassment “does not require any concrete or palpable result,” and that “unwelcome advances and inappropriate behaviour towards colleagues such as touching their body parts… are per se grave enough to cause harm.” It further reminded Judge Buffa that the offence is not dependent on “ill intent,” nor on the frequency of professional interactions, which are “a minor element” under a zero-tolerance policy.

Conteh thus reveals the core of Buffa’s jurisprudence: sexual harm, in his view, must be physically extreme, repeated, or visibly harmful in order to qualify as harassment. The effect is consistent: a systemic raising of evidentiary thresholds for victims and a lowering of accountability thresholds for perpetrators. Conteh is the jurisprudential seed from which Judge Buffa’s future exonerations sprouted.

Case No 2: UNDT Judgment: Szvetko v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. UNDT/2022/026

The Szvetko judgment exposes Judge Buffa’s cultural comfort with sexualized male behaviour disguised as mischief. Here, Judge Buffa treated comments such as “your breasts look like mountains” and inviting a female colleague to imagine the “pleasure” of water jets “between a woman’s legs,” and even the showing of nude male genitalia, as “euphoric jokes,” “boutades,” and as behaviour akin to “a boy on a school trip,” devoid of any intention to humiliate.

Once again, Judge Buffa’s eye is on the man, his mood, his context, his lack of maliciousness, rather than the impact on the women subjected to this conduct. The degradation of a professional woman into a sexual object is framed as childish play. Judge Buffa concluded that the misconduct “was not severe in nature” and again portrayed the perpetrator as merely exuberant rather than predatory.

UNAT’s reversal was devastating (UNAT Judgment (appeal, reversal):
Balint Szvetko v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. 2023-UNAT-1311).  It found Judge Buffa’s interpretation “speculative,” noted that he had “disregarded the evidence,” and reaffirmed the applicable legal framework. Crucially, UNAT held that this behaviour “exhibits a disposition which caused the complainants significant discomfort and anxiety and impacted their ongoing professional relationship,” and that Judge Buffa’s conclusion that the misconduct lacked severity because it occurred briefly was legally untenable. The Tribunal rejected Judge Buffa’s trivialization of pornographic exposure, stating plainly that “showing a colleague a picture of a penis can cause offence or humiliation,” and that “all individuals are entitled to be free of this kind of puerile behaviour.” The conduct, UNAT clarified, “violates the obligation of an international civil servant to uphold the highest standard of integrity,” and “naturally would undermine professional confidence.”

Here, Judge Buffa’s habitual logic becomes unmistakable: women must tolerate sexually explicit intrusion so long as the perpetrator can be framed as joking, playful, inebriated, or boyish. It is the judicial romanticization of male entitlement. Under Judge Buffa’s lens, women are expected to be resilient, unaffected, unhumiliated, and if they are humiliated, it is dismissed as hypersensitivity.

Szvetko mirrors Conteh in dismantling the same Buffa principle: that a woman must prove explicit distress, explicit damage, explicit consequences to her career rather than simply the fact of being sexually objectified in the workplace.

Case No 3: UNDT Judgment (with Buffa’s dissent): AAE v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. UNDT/2022/030

In AAE, Judge Buffa’s dissenting opinion exposes the apex of his judicial perspective on sexual violence. Faced with a case in which a D-1 Director raped a colleague after she told him she did not want sex and attempted to leave, Judge Buffa turned to the woman’s behaviour; not to the man’s actions,  as the decisive factor. He invoked her “friendly disposition” as “exculpatory,” and he questioned how rape could occur when the woman did not scream, did not physically struggle, and did not reiterate her objection multiple times. His reasoning assimilates friendliness into invitation and silence into consent. It asks, implicitly: why didn’t she resist harder?

But your Honour:

A Kiss is not a Free Pass for Sex.
A kiss is not a contract. and;

Silence under shock is not consent.

UNAT’s full bench demolished this reasoning UNAT Judgment (full bench): AAE v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. 2023-UNAT-1332. It held that the Director had engaged in “non-consensual sex… amounting to sexual assault,” and that relying on tacit consent or the absence of repeated objections was legally invalid. UNAT affirmed that sexual assault can occur “without threats of violence,” particularly within a power-imbalanced relationship, and accepted the victim’s explanation that she did not scream because she was “in shock,” “ashamed,” and “cognizant of her precarious situation.”

Here, as in Conteh and Szvetko, Judge Buffa’s analysis repeatedly turns to female reaction, rather than male action, as the evidentiary hinge. The woman carries the burden of proving fear; the man is relieved of the burden of proving respect. The judicial gaze is male-centric: what mattered to Judge Buffa was not whether the man violated the woman’s autonomy, but whether the woman reacted loudly enough to convince him.

Case No 4: UNDT Judgment: Makeen v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. UNDT/2023/071

In the Makeen case, Judge Buffa again applied his consistent judicial relativism around sexual harm, this time in the context of sexual exploitation. Here, the perpetrator was a 53-year-old married UN staff member who repeatedly engaged in sexual acts with an 18-year-old impoverished woman who cleaned his home, cooked for him, and was economically dependent on him. Yet Judge Buffa saw no power dynamic, no coercive context, no vulnerability, only “consensual” sexual interaction “pertaining to the Applicant’s private life.”

This reasoning is revealing: Judge Buffa treats power disparity as irrelevant if the victim technically agreed to be present, or did not explicitly object, or,  in this case,  was merely young, poor, unprotected, and dependent. He reads “consent” where the law sees coercion by circumstance.

UNAT’s reversal was once again categorical (Makeen v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. 2024-UNAT-1461). It held that:

“Consent is immaterial to the offence of sexual exploitation and abuse.”

With that single sentence, UNAT dismantled Judge Buffa’s entire operative premise. It went further:

“V01 was unable to fully consent due to the unequal relationship and power imbalance that existed between her and Mr. Makeen.”

Here, UNAT stated plainly what Judge Buffa refused to see: that consent is not a matter of mere verbal or physical acquiescence, but must be free of dependency, intimidation, and deprivation. The Tribunal stressed that the perpetrator held “a position of trust and support,” and that the victim’s “economic and social status put her in a state of dependency.”

UNAT also directly contradicted Judge Buffa’s claim that the misconduct pertained to private life:

“the duty of staff members to act with integrity… extends to their conduct both within and outside the workplace due to the potential reputational damage their adverse actions may cause to the Organization.”

Once again, Judge Buffa shielded a male UN actor by shrinking the scope of accountability to the boundaries of the bedroom, as though sexual access to a dependent teenager employed in one’s home were merely private recreation. UNAT restored the definition of sexual abuse to its legal and ethical meaning: exploitation of vulnerability, not romantic interaction. This case illustrates transactional sex under conditions of imbalance, dependency, and vulnerability. If a young woman cooks your meals, cleans your floors, and is financially dependent on you,  she cannot freely consent.

Judge Buffa’s approach in Makeen reveals his intellectual consistency: in Conteh, he could not see harm unless it disrupted work; in Szvetko, he could not see harassment unless accompanied by ill intent; in AAE, he could not see rape unless force or screaming occurred; and in Makeen, he could not see exploitation unless the victim explicitly vocalized objection despite dependency.

All these judgments clearly point to repetition of Judge Buffa’s cultural assumptions about women’s consent.

Case No 5: UNDT Judgment: Samarasinha v. Secretary-General, Judgment No. UNDT/2025/047 (July 2025) UNAT: appeal pending (not yet adjudicated at appellate stage)

And then we arrive at Samarasinha, the newest UNDT judgment issued in July 2025;  the one where Judge Buffa again cleared a male senior official at the D-1 level despite testimonies from multiple women and corroborating diplomatic witnesses.

Here the pattern repeats so perfectly it becomes almost formulaic. Even though there were clear shortcomings in the OIOS investigation, Judge Buffa went on to dismiss another allegation of sexual assault because the victim was drunk, because the recollection was not detailed twelve years later, because she had “flirtatious behaviour”  as though intoxication invalidates memory and flirting invalidates violation.

Judge Buffa wrote:

“a recollection… in a context of flirtatious behaviour… cannot substantiate an accusation of sexual assault, notably where the recollection of the events are not detailed and not lived by a sober person.”

Once again, Judge Buffa  implies that a woman who was intoxicated cannot be sexually assaulted because she cannot remember explicitly enough to satisfy him.

He even dismissed the victim’s account of being pinned in bed as “weak,” and deemed the surrounding allegations “almost meaningless” and “without relevance.” He trivialized repeated physical contact, the staring at breasts, and the delivery of invitations laced with sexual undertones as “insignificant.” He wrote that these acts lacked “sexual connotation,” as though a senior official touching a woman’s hips and waist “while inebriated” somehow falls within acceptable social interaction in Judge Buffa’s mental universe.

And most tellingly, he declared that even cumulatively, these acts were “unable to substantiate… a behaviour of a gravity able to justify a measure like ALWOP.”

In other words: even if multiple women say it, even if they say it over time, even if external witnesses corroborate it, Judge Buffa does not find it serious.

Across these judgments, a consistent evidentiary posture emerges: women’s testimony is approached with skepticism, while male conduct is interpreted through a lens of benign intent. The result is a repeated downgrading of coercive acts into social misunderstandings and a systemic reluctance to attribute legal weight to female experience. This judicial orientation constitutes an epistemic bias,  a presumption of male innocence that persists even in the face of multiple corroborating accounts and sustained patterns of behaviour.

This consistent minimization of sexual misconduct,  repeated across Conteh, Szvetko, Makeen, AAE, and now Samarasinha,  constitutes what I refer to as the Buffa Doctrine.

The United Nations has repeatedly affirmed that it upholds a zero-tolerance policy toward sexual harassment, sexual assault, and sexual exploitation. Yet in practice, zero tolerance is meaningless when judicial interpretation becomes a filter that drains these standards of substance. The question is no longer whether Judge Buffa’s judgments are legally flawed: UNAT has already established that by vacating four of them and will likely do the same with the fifth. The question is whether the internal justice architecture will continue to tolerate a judicial approach that repeatedly diminishes the gravity of sexual misconduct and re-centres sympathy on the perpetrators rather than the victims.

The Judges of the UNDT are not freelancers. They are appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Internal Justice Council, precisely because the legitimacy of their office derives not from personal opinion but from fidelity to the Organization’s legal framework. When a UNDT judge develops an identifiable pattern of jurisprudence that contradicts UNAT’s established standards, repeatedly, and in the same direction, affecting the same class of victims, it is no longer a matter of individual interpretation,  it becomes a matter of institutional accountability.

Judge Buffa’s judicial reasoning, across these cases, does not advance the UN’s commitments under the Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the ICCPR. It does not uphold the Secretary-General’s professed principles of zero tolerance. It does not protect women in the system who report sexual misconduct. It does, however, provide a signal, loud, clear, unmistakable,  to every perpetrator who might consider testing boundaries: that if their actions fall short of cinematic brutality, there is a judge who may well reinterpret coercion as misunderstanding, predation as exuberance, and violation as miscommunication.

So we must ask: how many times must a judge be reversed: four? five? six?  before someone in authority acknowledges the pattern?

When does the Internal Justice Council intervene? When does the General Assembly exercise its oversight responsibility?

And how many women in the UN must endure professional retaliation, reputational harm, and psychological damage because a judge’s cultural biases consistently discount their experiences?

Precedent is the true expression of judicial philosophy. And Buffa’s precedents: overturned, contradicted, and repudiated,  speak to a persistent bias incompatible with impartial adjudication.

This week, the United Nations Dispute Tribunal issued a baffling judgment to say the very least, Novo v. Secretary-General, UNDT/2025/098 (26 November 2025),  in which it rescinded the decision of termination for a former UNICEF staff member who was charged with serious misconduct for sexual harassment (and unauthorized activities).

This judgment raises serious concerns about the UNDT’s understanding of power dynamics in the workplace and about the extent to which such rulings will discourage future reporting of sexual harassment in the UN.

The judgment itself is 71 pages long and refers to detailed witness examination, cross-examination, and OIOS interview transcripts. Despite sexually harassing three female staff/consultants (all of whom filed complaints) and despite corroborating witnesses, the judge chose to believe the supervisor’s version, using a copy-paste approach to dismiss all allegations of sexual harassment, save for the unauthorized outside activities.

The Tribunal established that in one incident the staff member approached the female supervisee at a gym while she was engaged in routine physical exercise and made remarks in Bosnian implying that she was instructed by her husband to work on her “booty” using colloquial language. The perpetrator explained that he was observing her form because he noticed some technical issues during her deadlift, and he mentioned that her husband might have advised her on her technique to make her booty bigger.

In weighing whether this constituted sexual harassment by a supervisor, the judgment unbelievably reads:

“The question before this Tribunal is whether the Applicant’s behavior, unprofessional staring at V03’s posterior and the statement about her husband’s instructions, constitutes harassment or sexual harassment. In the Tribunal’s view, the Applicant’s conduct must be evaluated in context. The act of staring appears to be a pattern of habitual, subconscious observation rather than any sexual gesture or act.”

The judge went on to justify the comments by stating that the act of staring at her booty might have been:

“reflecting an awkward attempt at social interaction rather than misconduct”

And:

“the Tribunal acknowledges V03’s feelings of discomfort but considers that the subjective offence alone does not establish harassment or sexual harassment; particularly when there is no objective evidence that the behavior was sexual or intimidating. Indeed, the Tribunal considers that, once more, the Applicant displayed unprofessional and intrusive behavior, but not one of a sexual nature.”

So for all UN staff exercising at the gym, the next time your supervisor stares directly at your backside while deadlifting and comments on your “booty” don’t get uncomfortable, because according to the UNDT, it’s just social interaction… with your backside..

In another disturbing episode, the supervisor gave a different staff member (a superviosee also) a copy of the book: “Sex and Lies: True stories of women’s intimate lives in the Arab world” by Leila Slimani claiming it was “relevant to her work.”

The book is about the sexual experiences of women in Morocco and the Arab world. And as The Guardian described it, Slimani “returns to north Africa to explore sex, pornography and hypocrisy.”

The supervisee testified that her work had nothing whatsoever to do with sexual narratives, Arab women’s intimate experiences, or Morocco. She explained that she did not challenge her supervisor at the time due to power dynamics being at the lowest rank, dependent on him for contract renewal and fearing that complaints would go unaddressed in the isolated Bihać duty station.

The judge correctly established the facts but once again dismissed the allegation, filtering it through his own selective perception of harassment. According to the judge, even though the supervisee found the gift deeply inappropriate, he adopted the supervisor’s absurd justification that the gift was an act of “educational sharing,” potentially useful to humanitarian work:

“whether the book is professionally relevant can be subjective, and in some humanitarian contexts materials concerning women’s intimate experiences or trafficking may bear on protection, gender-based violence, or cultural understanding relevant to child protection work.”

The judge then criticized the supervisee’s internal reaction by stating:

“V02’s assessment of the book’s inappropriateness was based on her perception of the contents of the book, which, in turn, was based on her interpretation of the title, back cover, and online summaries.”

And dismissed the claim by concluding:

“gifting of the book does not meet the objective threshold for harassment or sexual harassment. There is no evidence of sexual intent, no pattern of sexualized conduct tied to the gifting, and no demonstration that the act interfered with VO2’s work or created a hostile work environment.”

So, if your supervisor hands you a book titled “Sex and Lies” you are apparently expected to ignore the “Sex” part, trust his enlightened intellectual intentions, and focus on theoretical cultural anthropology. After all, if the UNDT judge can turn a blind eye, so can you.

Then, in three separate incidents involving two supervisees, the staff member commented to one woman that she preferred “strong muscular men” asked another, while walking behind her:

“How tall are you? You have a very nice height for a woman”,

and later at a bar in Bihać, leaned too close to her, invading her personal space, asking if she would like to “ride in an expensive car if driven by a handsome man, and telling her she was the type of woman used to men doing favors for her”.

And in all three incidents, the judge dismissed the allegations.

On the comment about interest in muscular men, the judge reasoned:

“the remark was a casual, somewhat awkward comment about V03’s personal preferences. The fact that V03 felt uncomfortable is acknowledged and is relevant. However, subjective discomfort alone does not establish harassment or sexual harassment.”

So next time your supervisor randomly offers his unsolicited psychoanalysis of your taste in male body types, maybe you should reply, “Thank you for your professional assessment.” Because apparently, commentary on your intimate personal preferences is part of your job.

And when your supervisor asks about your height and compliments you on it, while following behind you, do not mistake it for predatory interest. The UNDT judge insists:

“comment is addressed to physical stature only, and occurred in a social, informal context involving several colleagues”…

“unwelcome and unwise conduct … falls short of proving the requisite objective severity or sexual character.”

The extent to which this judge fails to grasp the nuances of sexual harassment as experienced by women is staggering. For the vast majority of women, sexual harassment is not confined to physical contact. It is anything that intrudes upon their bodily autonomy and personal dignity: the invasive stare, the unsolicited comment about one’s curves or “booty,” the remark about one’s taste in men, the book handed with a knowing smirk that centers sexuality as its theme. This is precisely how predators operate, not with overt groping, but through a steady drip of boundary violations and insinuations.

Why should my supervisor be commenting on my physical appearance?
Why should he be giving me a book titled “Sex and Lies”, a book which The Guardian characterized as “exploring sex, pornography and hypocrisy”?
Why should he be asking me if I prefer “strong muscular men”?
Why is he leaning in, crowding my space, speaking low and close, as if intimacy is assumed?

And the fundamental question:

Why is any of this taking place inside a UN workplace that claims to champion dignity, equality, and respect?

Many men in the UN derive perverse satisfaction from making women uncomfortable. They thrive on the microaggressions, the innuendos, the baiting comments that hover just below the disciplinary threshold. They get away with it precisely because of the ambiguity,  the plausible deniability. And now, emboldened by judgments like this, they will feel even safer doing so.

These men indulge in a quiet vocation: testing how far they can intrude into the bodies, space, and psyche of the women they supervise knowing full well the power imbalance protects them. And instead of confronting this pattern, too many judges prefer to dissect each incident into sterile fragments, stripping away the lived experience of women and repackaging predatory behavior as “awkward social interaction” or “habitual staring.”

Well, here is the reality:

We are not concerned with whether he meant it sexually, poetically, or subconsciously.

We are concerned with whether a professional environment exists where women can work without being sexualized, analyzed, or targeted.

Women do not join the UN hoping their supervisor will inquire about their body shape or sexual preferences. They join believing that equality and respect are more than decorative slogans painted onto banners and mission statements.

But clearly, in the eyes of this UNDT judgment, it is all just “much ado about nothing.”

This reasoning also stands in direct contradiction with binding jurisprudence of the UN internal justice system itself. In Hallal UNDT/2011/046, para. 55, later affirmed by UNAT 2012-UNAT-207,  the Tribunal held:

“in sexual harassment cases, credible oral victim testimony alone may be fully sufficient to support a finding of serious misconduct, without further corroboration being required”

And UNAT confirmed:

“The Dispute Tribunal did not err in law in giving full evidentiary weight to the complainant’s oral testimony absent documentary corroboration.”

The jurisprudence affirms that victim testimony is legally probative and sufficient to ground a finding of misconduct. By dismissing these women’s testimony because it did not include “objective evidence,” the judge was defying settled jurisprudence. A legal standard already affirmed at the appellate level.

This inconsistency between jurisprudential requirement and judicial practice demands scrutiny. For while the Tribunal applies an intent-based threshold in this case, the Organization simultaneously asserts a trauma-aware, victim-centred approach in its reporting to the GA.  The UN itself reports to the General Assembly the following passage in the Secretary-General’s report (Report of the Secretary-General, “Special measures for protection from sexual exploitation and abuse,” A/79/789, 17 February 2025, para. 5).:

“For example, when the nine judges of the United Nations Dispute
Tribunal visited the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) in June 2024 as part of their induction into the United Nations administration of justice system, they were informed about measures in place to prevent and respond to sexual exploitation and abuse and had the opportunity to hear from the Special Coordinator
and the Victims’ Rights Advocate. The aim was to provide the judges with first-hand insights into the complexities and challenges associated with delivering protection from sexual exploitation and abuse on the ground, including the commitment to a
victim-centred approach. The Special Coordinator and the Victims’ Rights Advocate also raised concerns about the impact, especially on victims, of the protracted administrative and judicial decision-making.

Following the mission, the judges’reflections informed discussions and recommendations at the Third Meeting of Investigatory Bodies on Protection from Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Harassment
convened jointly by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee and the United Nations Evaluation Group in June 2024. The Special Coordinator and the Victims’ Rights Advocate are planning to conduct similar information sessions with the judges of the
United Nations Appeals Tribunal during a mission to the Central African Republic scheduled to take place in early 2025.”

This is a formal declaration to Member States that the UNDT judges have been exposed to and educated on the lived realities of sexual exploitation and abuse, particularly the effects on victims. The UN uses this text to demonstrate compliance with a “victim-centred approach” implying that judicial interpretation would be informed by awareness of trauma, power asymmetry, and vulnerability.

Yet in this UNICEF judgment, the judicial reasoning shows no application of that mandate. The judge did not adopt a victim-centered evidentiary lens. Instead, he treated the testimony of three women as insufficient because it lacked “objective” proof  directly contradicting the Hallal standard, which recognizes that in sexual harassment cases, victim testimony can stand alone as probative evidence.

This illustrates a striking contradiction: before the GA, the UN asserts that judges have undergone sensitization on victim impact and reporting challenges. But in practice, the judge reverted to assessing the accused’s conduct through the lens of innocuous intent rather than evaluating its effect on the women. The “victim-centred approach” praised in GA reporting collapses under judicial reasoning that effectively places the burden of proof on victims to demonstrate not only harassment, but the perpetrator’s internal sexual intent.

What the UN presents to Member States as advancement in judicial awareness and responsiveness does not translate into adjudication. The legal framework that the UN claims to be strengthening remains selectively applied and when tested in real cases, defaults back to minimizing, reframing, and dismissing victim testimony.

A justice system that demands victims prove the psychology of their harasser is not victim-centred it is perpetrator-shielding.

And to all the women out there, I say: keep deadlifting.