Category: Administration of Justice

The Legal Erosion of Due Process: How UNRWA’s Leadership Enabled Israel’s Narrative

A Critical Legal Analysis of UNRWA’s Commissioner-General’s Termination of Nine Gaza Staff Members

I. Introduction

When the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was established in 1949, its founding resolution (302 [IV]) mandated an independent humanitarian function, insulated from political interference. The Commissioner-General, as the agency’s head, is bound by the same Charter obligations as all senior UN officials: to act exclusively in the interest of the United Nations, free from instructions from any government.

Yet in January 2024, that principle was dramatically breached.

Following unverified Israeli allegations that several UNRWA Gaza staff members participated in the 7 October 2023 attacks, Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini swiftly terminated nine Palestinian UNRWA staff without any evidence, due process, or hearings. 

By his own admission, the Commissioner-General fired the staff “in close consultation with the Secretary-General” and “in the interest of the Agency,” even as Israel provided no substantiating proof. His actions not only violated fundamental due-process rights under UNRWA’s internal regulatory framework but also handed Israel the rhetorical weapon it had long sought: official confirmation that UNRWA employed “Hamas operatives.” This rhetoric is, of course, devoid of any truth.

Within days, Israeli authorities restricted Lazzarini’s access to Gaza, and later shuttered the Agency’s East Jerusalem office. In effect, the Commissioner-General’s legally indefensible act furnished the pretext for UNRWA’s political dismantling.

This article examines, from a purely legal perspective, how these decisions contravened the UN’s internal justice principles, undermined the agency’s independence, and blurred the boundary between humanitarian neutrality and political appeasement.

II. The Legal Framework

1. Institutional Autonomy under the UN Charter

Article 100 of the UN Charter stipulates that international civil servants “shall not seek or receive instructions from any government.” The corresponding Staff Regulation 1.1 reinforces this duty of independence. The Commissioner-General of UNRWA, although appointed by the Secretary-General, exercises authority delegated by the General Assembly, not by Member States.

The Charter therefore precludes any de facto subordination of UNRWA to a State’s political or security agenda. The Commissioner-General’s legal allegiance is to the UN system’s administrative law and to the staff regulations that safeguard fairness, neutrality, and the rule of law within the Organization, notably Article 100 of the UN Charter and Staff Regulation 1.1(a), which explicitly prohibit any UN official from seeking or receiving instructions from a government.

2. Due Process under the UNRWA Staff Rules

UNRWA’s Staff Regulations and Rules mirror the UN Secretariat’s internal justice framework, anchored in:

  • Presumption of innocence: no disciplinary measure can be imposed without clear, credible evidence. 
  • Right to be heard: staff must be informed of charges and allowed to respond before sanctions are imposed. The UNRWA nine staff did not receive any charge letters setting out the allegations, and they were not afforded any opportunity to respond before being terminated.
  • Standard of proof: allegations must be established on the “balance of probabilities” at a minimum, or “beyond a reasonable doubt” for grave misconduct. In the case at hand, since the sanction concerned staff termination (serious misconduct), the correct threshold to be applied was beyond a reasonable doubt. No standard of proof was applied to the nine staff who were terminated.
  • Proportionality and reasoned decision: sanctions must correspond to proven misconduct, supported by a reasoned administrative decision.
  • Judicial oversight: staff possess the right to appeal before the UN Dispute Tribunal (UNDT) and, subsequently, the UN Appeals Tribunal (UNAT).

These guarantees embody the UN’s internal rule of law. They are not optional, even in crises.

3. Role of the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS)

OIOS functions as the UN’s independent investigative arm. Its mandate is fact-finding, not adjudication. The final decision to impose discipline rests with the head of entity, here, the Commissioner-General, who must base that decision on verified, corroborated evidence. OIOS does not pronounce guilt; it simply reports findings.

Therefore, when OIOS states that “evidence, if authenticated and corroborated, could indicate involvement,” this signals that proof is incomplete, not that wrongdoing is established. Acting upon such an inconclusive report constitutes a fundamental procedural error.

III. Factual Chronology

1. January 2024: The Allegations

In January 2024, Israeli authorities transmitted to UNRWA a set of allegations claiming that 12 staff members in Gaza were involved in the 7 October attacks. No supporting evidence was shared. Nevertheless, Commissioner-General Lazzarini, in consultation with the Secretary-General, immediately terminated the contracts of the implicated staff “in the interest of the Agency.”

By doing so, he pre-empted both investigation and adjudication, effectively presuming guilt. The act bypassed all procedural steps mandated by the Staff Rules; notification of charges, opportunity to respond (OTR), due process, hearing in case of termination, and proportional review.

2. March–April 2024: Expansion of the Investigation

As further unverified allegations surfaced, additional staff were placed under OIOS investigation. The UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) later investigated a total of 19 UNRWA staff members after Israel provided information on an additional seven individuals in March and April 2024. 

The Commissioner-General maintained the summary terminations, justifying them as necessary to protect UNRWA’s reputation and reassure donors. Yet this justification itself contradicts the raison d’être of due process: protecting institutional integrity through law, not expediency.

3. 5 August 2024: The Commissioner-General’s Statement

Upon OIOS’s completion of its review, Commissioner-General Lazzarini issued a formal statement:

“In nine other cases, the evidence obtained by OIOS was insufficient to support the staff members’ involvement… For the remaining nine cases, the evidence – if authenticated and corroborated – could indicate involvement… I have decided… these remaining nine staff members cannot work for UNRWA. All contracts… will be terminated in the interest of the Agency.”

This language exposes the legal incoherence of the decision. “Could indicate” is a hypothetical, not a factual conclusion. Terminating staff on that basis amounts to administrative arbitrariness.

Moreover, Lazzarini acknowledged that Israel had not provided evidence despite repeated requests, yet proceeded regardless. The decision therefore lacked the essential element of facta probata (evidence proven).

The dismissals triggered a cascade of political repercussions: Israel restricted the Commissioner-General’s entry to Gaza, forced closure of UNRWA’s Jerusalem field office, and intensified its campaign to defund the Agency. Ironically, Lazzarini’s decision, intended to preserve UNRWA’s credibility, supplied Israel with the official validation it had long sought: that UNRWA employed Hamas affiliates.

5. 24 and 30 October 2025: The United Nations’ Spokesperson’s Clarification on the Record

More recently, during the 24 October 2025 noon briefing, the Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary-General stated:

“There were a small number of UNRWA staff members who were credibly linked to Hamas, and we have fired those personnel.”

On 30 October 2025, during the noon briefing, the UN Deputy Spokesperson had to retract and publicly correct this statement:

**Clarification

“I have a clarification to make.  In the noon briefing on Friday, 24 October, responding to a question about allegations against UNRWA personnel by the Israeli authorities, I said that “there were a small number of staff members of UNRWA who were credibly linked to Hamas and we have handled that situation and fired those personnel”.

This was incorrect.  The outcome of the OIOS [Office of Internal Oversight Services] investigation into these allegations did not qualify them as credible.  Instead, OIOS said that the evidence that it obtained — if authenticated and corroborated — might indicate that the staff members may have been involved.  The Government of Israel, to date, has not provided additional elements to corroborate or authenticate the claims, although it has been asked to do so repeatedly. Furthermore, the International Court of Justice last week ruled that the State of Israel’s claim that UNRWA is infiltrated by Hamas was not substantiated, nor were allegations that UNRWA is not a neutral organisation.”

This clarification is decisive. It formally admits that no credible evidence existed. The nine staff members were therefore dismissed unlawfully, in violation of both internal due-process guarantees and the principle of presumption of innocence.

IV. Key Legal Issues Emerging from the Record

  1. Absence of Evidentiary Basis
     The Commissioner-General’s reliance on speculative OIOS language (“if authenticated and corroborated”) fails the basic evidentiary threshold required for termination. Without authenticated proof, the decision is ultra vires, beyond his lawful authority. Further, in cases of serious misconduct where the contemplated disciplinary measure could be termination, the threshold of evidence required is beyond a reasonable doubt.
  2. Violation of Due Process
      By acting before investigation and denying staff the opportunity to respond, the Commissioner-General contravened the UN’s procedural guarantees under Chapter X of the UN rules on disciplinary process, as well as Article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (right to a fair hearing).
  3. Subordination to a Member State’s Allegations
     The Commissioner-General’s actions reflected de facto compliance with Israeli political pressure, contrary to Article 100 of the Charter and Regulation 1.1 of the Staff Regulations prohibiting receipt of instructions from governments.
  4. Public Defamation and Reputational Harm
     His statements, and their immediate media amplification, effectively branded UNRWA staff as terrorists. Even absent evidence, the public perception of guilt caused irreparable reputational damage to the Agency and the individuals concerned.
  5. Institutional Accountability Vacuum
     Despite the subsequent UN clarification and ICJ ruling dismissing Israel’s claims, no remedial action, such as reinstatement or compensation, has been taken. The absence of corrective measures perpetuates impunity within the UN’s leadership structure.

From a legal standpoint, the only appropriate remedy would be the immediate reinstatement of the nine unlawfully dismissed staff, or at the very least, an accountability review into the Commissioner-General’s conduct to restore institutional integrity.

UNRWA Is Not Hamas.

It is a United Nations agency operating under the authority of the General Assembly, employing doctors, teachers, engineers, and social workers, all of them refugees themselves, who serve under UN rules of neutrality and oversight. The attempt to recast this humanitarian institution as a militant organization is a political Israeli fabrication, and the Commissioner-General’s unlawful dismissals gave that fiction an undeserved aura of legitimacy

Beyond the procedural irregularities, the broader consequence is reputational and structural: the very act intended to protect UNRWA from political attack became the instrument that enabled it.

The Commissioner-General’s actions have contributed to fuel the narrative of Israel about UNRWA staff linked to Hamas. Contrary to his statements, the CG failed to protect UNRWA from reputational risks. Quite the contrary, it was his acts that led to an irreparable reputational damage by linking, incorrectly and unlawfully and outside any regulatory framework, the dismissal of these staff to Hamas- a damage that may prove be very difficult to repair.

UNAT Calls the Palestinian Suffering Under Israeli Occupation “Ordinary”

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.

In Hejab v. Commissioner-General of UNRWA (Judgment No. 2025-UNAT-1570, issued last month), the Tribunal shockingly found that:

“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.

Staff Beware: If the Tribunal Says It’s Unlawful, Why Is UN80 Asking You to Sign It?

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?

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Do You See the People You’re Leading?

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?

Apparently, You Can Survive Mortar Fire But Not a Footnote in ST/AI/2012/3 (Field staff risk their lives. HQ staff revise the rules.)

Picture taken by Nadine Kaddoura/Homs 2012

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.

What’s Your Xanax Dose Today? The UN Tribunal Wants to Know.

⚠️ 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 standard for 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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

DutyofcareUN-20102025Download

They Warned of Millions Lost in the Pension Fund. The UN Fired Them.

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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 appointment in 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 portfolio multiple 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.

What Really Happens at UNICEF When You Report Sexual Harassment

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 are structurally 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.

How Can You Trust UN80 When Senior UN Leaders Are Dismantling Justice?

While Everyone’s Watching UN Budget Cuts, Two USGs Are Acting With Total Impunity and No One’s Paying Attention

As all eyes at the United Nations remain glued to budget slashes and the highly publicized UN80 staffing and structure review, two Under-Secretary-Generals (USGs) are quietly bulldozing every rule, principle, and safeguard that underpins international civil service and getting away with it.

At the International Seabed Authority (ISA), a recent UNAT order (Order No. 2024-591) pulls back the curtain on a shocking abuse of authority by the newly appointed Secretary-General of ISA.

On 1 January 2025, she opened her term with a promising inaugural statement:

“We stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us, leaders who have made the ISA into the steadfast institution it is today… In my first 100 days, I will focus on listening and learning.”

Listening was the last thing she did. Within days, ISA’s new Secretary-General tore through UN rules, trampled institutional safeguards, and made it clear that accountability had no place in her administration.

Six staff members (a mix of P-3s, P-4s, a D-1, and a D-2) who had signed official letters of appointment in December 2024, set to begin their roles on 1 January 2025 under fixed-term two-year contracts, saw their contracts immediately terminated.   Make no mistake about it. The staff had already assumed duties and were behind their desks for a few days when the letters arrived. They were dismissed within the first week of the new USG taking office on the 1st of January 2025.

Yes, you read that right.

On 2 January, the new Secretary-General issued letters to all six informing them that ISA would be “unable to complete the onboarding processes” of their appointments. To paper over what amounts to a breach of contract and a violation of established norms of administrative justice, the Administration offered a legally meaningless promise: that the terminated staff would be ‘automatically shortlisted’ for future vacancies: a statement devoid of enforceability, accountability, or fairness.

This was a direct breach of the Organization’s obligations under the UN Charter and Staff Regulations. The unilateral nullification of valid contracts, without process or explanation, stripped staff members of their rights and undermined the core principles of international civil service

The UNAT has repeatedly affirmed that a unilateral withdrawal of a duly accepted offer of appointment, absent cause, due process, or consent, is unlawful and constitutes an abuse of authority (see, e.g., Wang v. Secretary-General of the United Nations, Judgment No. 2012-UNAT-247; Appellee v. ISA, 2024-UNAT-591). The arbitrary nullification of valid appointments undermines the integrity of the international civil service and violates principles enshrined in Article 101 of the UN Charter

And it gets worse.

When the staff submitted their urgent motions to the Joint Appeals Board (JAB) (ISA’s first-instance tribunal) they surely didn’t expect that, almost in parallel, the new Secretary-General had quietly dismantled the very tribunal tasked with reviewing her conduct.

Within days of assuming office and just as the challenges to her decisions were being filed, she eliminated the JAB altogether, preemptively blocking any legal scrutiny and effectively erasing the very mechanism meant to review her actions. With their claims still pending, the tribunal vanished leaving them with no legal avenue and no institutional safeguard.

Let that sink in: The ISA Secretary-General responded to a legal challenge against her administration by dismantling the very body that would adjudicate it.

By 7 January, the JAB had become non-functional, its mandate suspended, its duty abandoned. And just like that, while six staff members waited for legal redress, the institution shut the courtroom doors on them and tossed the keys.

Meanwhile, ISA’s Secretary-General moved quickly to fill the very positions she had just vacated, undermining any possibility of reinstatement and preempting the outcome of ongoing legal proceedings. This calculated move frustrated the administration of justice and violated the principle of reinstatement, denying affected staff the chance to be restored to their rightful posts.

But she wasn’t finished.

Five weeks after dismantling the JAB, she appointed a new JAB chair: Martha Halfeld, a former UNAT judge, and notably, a fellow Brazilian. Conflict of interest? Perception of impartiality? 

Apparently none of that matters when you’re building an accountability-free regime.

One of the six dismissed staff members, the former Chief of Staff at D-1 level, filed a separate motion (Order No. 2024-592 (Bourrel), exposing an even darker dimension.

The motion exposed a deeply alarming act by the Administration: under the direct authority of the new Secretary-General, ISA ordered the abrupt disconnection of the Chief of Staff’s home security system in Jamaica, without notice while she and her daughter were still living there. The former Chief of Staff describes discovering that ISA had instructed the private security company to visit her home and disable the system.  As described in her sworn affidavit and the UNAT order, she stated the measure was “designed purely to harm and cause distress, and represented an assault on an international civil servant’s duty of care”.

And while this chaos unfolded, the ISA Secretary-General stood before the Thirtieth Session of the Council on 17 March 2025 and delivered this gem of a statement:

“I have taken steps to improve internal communication and introduced measures conducive to a more positive and supportive work environment… [including] strengthened internal justice mechanisms to uphold institutional accountability… Member States can be assured that all actions taken have fully complied with institutional procedures… and have been executed with due process and transparency.“

But the UN Appeals Tribunal saw through the façade. In direct contradiction to her narrative of transparency and strengthened justice, UNAT laid bare the truth:

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

So much for strengthened justice mechanisms. The ISA Secretary-General was publicly promising accountability while privately dismantling the only tribunal capable of holding her accountable

Just last week, UNAT issued another order on a related case, showing how the administration had rushed to fill one of the terminated positions ensuring the claimant couldn’t be reinstated. A textbook move to obstruct justice before it could take its course.

But this story of abuse and concealment doesn’t end at the ISA. It circles back to New York right into the office of another USG who has just made headlines for all the wrong reasons. (For full background, please see my earlier articles on Certioraris and LinkedIn detailing the Hosali case and the disturbing patterns it reveals inside UN senior leadership)

In Judgment No. 2025-UNAT-1523, the UN Appeals Tribunal found entirely in favor of Ms. Mita Hosali, reversing the flawed ruling of the UN Dispute Tribunal (UNDT). The judgment goes far beyond confirming procedural violations: it reveals a sustained pattern of bias, racial discrimination, and manipulation of the selection process by the USG for Global Communications, in clear breach of the principles of impartiality, equity, and fair competition that underpin international administrative law.

Ms. Hosali, a long-serving woman of color from the Global South, had competed for a D-2 position. The USG leading the panel manipulated the process to favor an external white male candidate, even going as far as to frame Hosali’s years of internal UN experience as a liability.

The USG chairing the interview panel recorded the following in the competency-based interview report:


“Recycling people in UN is problematic. Sometimes needs external.“

Recycling?? Since when did internal UN staff become disposable waste?? And this coming from the very person tasked with managing the UN’s global communications strategy??

Another gem from the interview evaluation sheets:

“Sucking up”

That’s how the panel interpreted Ms. Hosali’s mention of the USG’s strategy during the interview. A comment UNAT rightly flagged as deeply subjective, speculative, and entirely inappropriate.

The tribunal found interalia, that:

“The Panel made a subjective assessment based on personal opinions rather than objective factors… comments that contrast with the Panel’s assessment of the Selected Candidate that he was objective and beyond reproach.”

So a male Brit is “objective,” while an experienced woman of color is “recycled” and “sucking up.” How’s that for an equal playing field?

UNAT also flagged the lack of justification for the selection, noting:

“This Tribunal expresses its serious concern about the lack of a sufficient record of the reasons supporting the choice… It is questionable how the Selected Candidate’s gender as male was considered a positive element in a department where males were more represented than females…”

Let’s be clear: the UNAT judgment is final and binding. So here’s the real question: what happens next?

How will the Secretary-General of the United Nations hold the USG for Global Communications accountable for the blatant discrimination and abuse of authority now officially confirmed in this ruling?

More to the point: how are we, as staff and observers, expected to trust the integrity of the new 14-member UN80 task force, the very team now reviewing staffing structures, post reductions, and potential job relocations when two USGs are behaving with unchecked impunity?

If you can dismantle a tribunal to avoid legal scrutiny in Kingston, and label experienced women of color as “recycled” in New York, then what does that say about the culture of impunity at the very top of the UN system?

You can’t restructure a broken system using the very hands that broke it.

The UN vs. the Global South Woman: What the Hosali UNAT Judgment Reveals About Institutionalized Discrimination

Three months ago, I wrote about an important UN Dispute Tribunal case: Hosali vs. Secretary-General of the United Nations (UNDT/2024/017), which powerfully exposed the gap between the UN’s public commitments to gender parity and geographical diversity, and its actual recruitment practices. The case centered on Mita Hosali, an Indian national and longtime UN staff member with over 40 years of service, who was passed over for a D-2 Director role in favor of a British male external candidate with no prior UN experience.

Her profile checked every box the Organization claims to value: institutional knowledge, leadership experience, and the perspective of a woman from the Global South. Yet none of that mattered.

Despite overwhelming evidence of systemic bias: 100% of senior hires in the department were from the Western European and Others Group (WEOG), and 67% were male; the Administration sidestepped the gender parity provisions (ST/AI/2020/5) by exploiting technical loopholes. The Tribunal acknowledged many of these troubling patterns; yet still dismissed the applicant’s appeal.

Hosali appealed to UNAT.

The rate of winning at UNAT for selection and recruitment cases is extremely low, almost non-existent. That is because in recruitment, there is a presumption of regularity, and this presumption is satisfied if the Administration can minimally show that the staff member’s candidature was given full and fair consideration.

Two weeks ago, UNAT made an oral pronouncement on the outcome of the 2025 spring session.

Hosali won.

The judgment is not yet out, but what transpired from this summary outcome is shocking, to say the least.

First, the UNAT alluded to its serious concerns about the Administration’s attempt to manipulate the definition and scope of ST/AI/2020/5 (Temporary Special Measures for Gender Parity), the same ST/AI that the Administration proudly promulgated a few years ago to enforce the Secretary-General’s 2018 System-Wide Gender Parity Strategy under a set of temporary provisional measures that would, in principle, help achieve gender parity levels at P-5 and above.

An ST/AI that the legislators themselves violate when it suits them, distorting its interpretation, even though its scope is not subject to any interpretation and clearly states:

Scope: “The temporary special measures contained in the present instruction shall apply to selections and appointments at each level at which gender parity has not been reached within the entity. The temporary special measures shall apply at all times when there is no such parity.”

Reneging on their own rules, their own laws.

Aside from this intentional subversion of the legal framework enshrined in the ST/AI, UNAT found:

“The UNDT erred in not addressing Hosali’s concerns that the Administration failed to give appropriate regard to issues of gender and geographic representation. UNAT agrees. Based on the available record provided, the Administration erred in multiple respects resulting in unfair treatment of Ms. Hosali. Ms. Hosali’s internal UN experience seemed to disadvantage her, even though this was a desirable criterion in the vacancy announcement, and her rights to fullest regard under Staff Regulation 4.4.”

Further, the competency-based interview (CBI) panel appraised the selected candidate’s gender and nationality seemingly as a positive element, but the record reflects no similar consideration for Ms. Hosali.

The CBI panel also made problematic, negative, and subjective comments about Ms. Hosali during the interview process.

UNAT concluded that Hosali was not afforded full and fair consideration during the process. UNDT erred when it held that the Administration fulfilled its obligation of minimal consideration.”

The most damning summary finding from this oral outcome was that the CBI panel also made “problematic, negative, and subjective” comments about Ms. Hosali during the interview process.

Problematic, negative, and subjective all point to abuse and discrimination, noting that that Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications was heading that panel. To conclude with such a finding points to the likelihood that UNAT requested the “production of evidence’ notably the evaluation sheets of the CBI panel.

This also begs the question: why was Hosali even recommended if such negative comments were made about her?

But the answer is quite simple.

Hosali is from the Global South and has an impressive 40 years of experience in the UN, in the Department of Global Communications. The externally selected candidate not only was white but also had zero years of experience in the UN.

Recommending Hosali, in the USG’s distorted logic, was a strategy to diffuse prospective appeals from internal candidates. But the strategy failed and the nepotism and corruption of senior officials was exposed.

Now consider this: unlike termination cases, compensation for appeals against unlawful recruitment cases, if upheld, is almost always minimal. In the case of Hosali, UNAT applied the regular compensation for the difference between D-1 and D-2 levels. Given her experience, Hosali is at the top of the step range at D-1, so in essence, she currently earns more than if selected at D-2 Step 1.

With 40 years of experience and approaching retirement age, Hosali did not appeal for financial gain, but rather as a matter of principle.

A principle that we would like the Secretary-General to answer and to hold accountable his USG for Global Communications.

A few weeks before the UNAT issued its decision, the Secretary-General made a discerning statement on the eve of International Women’s Day, stressing that gender equality was not just about fairness:

“It is about power—who gets a seat at the table, and who is locked out,” Guterres said. “It is about dismantling systems that allow inequalities to fester.”

Curiously, the very individuals enabling these entrenched inequalities are your own Under-Secretaries-General; and yet, as Secretary-General, you have failed to hold any of them accountable.

You speak of dismantling systems.

Perhaps the place to begin is not with rhetorical declarations on commemorative days, but with the dismantling of your own gender parity and inclusion frameworks, which, when measured against the facts of this case, amount to little more than aspirational platitudes and institutional window dressing.

How is it possible that a USG can violate, with impunity, every operative clause of an Administrative Instruction (ST/AI/2020/5) designed to enforce gender parity, in order to favor an external, male candidate from an already overrepresented regional group?

What does a legal victory mean when the outcome delivers only nominal compensation to a woman who was demonstrably wronged after four decades of loyal service? Does the Administration believe it can pay a pittance and bury the matter in footnotes?

What is now undeniable is the extent to which the UN Secretariat is willing to openly and unapologetically breach its own legal instruments in full public view, without any consequence.

And what of the UN’s new Anti-Racism Office? What is its mandate, if not to prevent precisely this kind of institutionalized subversion of normative safeguards? Is it a protective mechanism or simply another symbolic entity, designed to reassure Member States while structural discrimination continues unchallenged?

You call for dismantling systems.

But perhaps it is time to dismantle the performative policies on gender parity, disability inclusion, and racial equity against which the Organization routinely solicits funding, while internally violating every substantive obligation they purport to uphold.

Watch this space.

The judgment, when issued will not only be consequential. It will be damning

This is also a call to UNAT: be bold. The credibility of the sysyetm of administration of justice rests on your willingness to name the actors, to quote directly from the record, and to deliver a ruling that does not dilute the findings, conceal the facts, or shield senior officials from accountability.

Anything less will be a disservice to justice and to the staff members who continue to place faith in the very system that failed Ms. Hosali.