�山����

The UNAT considered an appeal by the Secretary-General of the United Nations. The UNAT held that its task was to review whether any or all the fees, for which Mr. Awad requested reimbursement, constituted admissible expenses, either as “enrolment-related fees” or “tuition”. The wording of Section 3.1(a) and (b) of ST/AI/2018/1/Rev.1, their systematic context with other provisions of ST/AI/2018/1/Rev.1, the goals of the General Assembly and UNAT’s recent jurisprudence should be taken into account. The UNAT found that there was no “plain meaning of enrollment”.  While the word “enrolment”, in itself, can be understood as a “continued enrolment”, enrolment is mainly defined as “the act of putting yourself or someone else onto the official list of members of a course, college or university, or group” (), respectively “the act of officially joining a course, school etc. (); consequently, “enrolment-related fees” are fees charged by an educational institution “to cover all the administrative costs involved in registering a child” and/or for “processing the student enrollment agreement” ().  It is only this second and more limited definition of “enrolment” and “enrolment-related fees” which is covered by Section 3.1(a) of ST/AI/2018/1/Rev.1.  Otherwise all mandatory fees even for extra-curricular and co-curricular activities would be admissible expenses.  The distinction between enrolment-related fees and tuition would become meaningless because, even if expenses could not be accepted as tuition, they would always fall under enrolment-related fees.  The UNAT noted that it had previously held that enrolment-related fees were defined as “the costs incurred by parents when their children begin their association with a particular school” .  In this judgment, the UNAT clarified that this definition was too narrow and has to be revised, because enrolment-related fees can occur at later stages if schools and/or universities charge fees for the registration into the program, course or class not only at the beginning of studies but every year, every semester/trimester or for specific courses or classes at a later stage. In this case, the UNAT found that the computer fee (USD 342.40) and the new student fee (USD 275.60) are admissible expenses under Section 3.1 of ST/AI/2018/1/Rev.1, while the campus fee (USD 2,694.00) and the school fee (USD 141.30) fall outside the scope of this provision. The UNAT granted the Secretary-General’s appeal in part and modified Judgment No. UNDT/2021/108, ordered the Secretary-General to accept the computer fee and the new student fee as admissible expenses under Section 3.1 of ST/AI/2018/Rev. 1, and reduce the amount recovered from Mr. Awad by USD 618.00, and dismissed the application in other parts.