UNDT/2010/171, Applicant
The respondent had sufficient grounds to believe that the applicant had, by altering the form, breached a fundamental requirement safeguarding the integrity of the refugee resettlement programme of UNHCR. This amounted to serious misconduct and was in breach of staff regulation 1.2. However, the failure to have due regard to independent evidence of an oppressive work environment and by not carrying out a proper investigation, as unanimously recommended in the JDC report, the Secretary-General effectively deprived himself of material which would have placed the misconduct in its proper perspective and context. Given the range of permissible sanctions for serious misconduct it is necessary to consider the totality of the circumstances, including any mitigating factors to arrive at a proper assessment as to where to pitch the appropriate sanction. Whilst a benign motive does not necessarily absolve a person from liability for misconduct it could, in certain circumstances, together with other factors affect choice of appropriate penalty under former staff rule 110.3(a) which provides for a range of eight different measures. Outcome: The sanction of summary dismissal was disproportionate.
The applicant was summarily dismissed for serious misconduct for altering the registration form of a refugee seeking resettlement and for failing to inform the resettlement committee when it met to make a decision to resettle this person. The applicant explained that she did so: 1) not to get a colleague into trouble, and 2) under instructions from her superior, who had not been subjected to a disciplinary investigation over this matter. The applicant submitted that there was a lack of transparency and good governance in the refugee resettlement programme at the particular UNHCR duty station and that her superior was particularly at fault in bending the rules and in generally bullying the staff. When asked why she did not initially say to the investigators that she altered the refugee’s form upon instructions by the head of office, the applicant said she was afraid of the consequences of doing so because she would have been retaliated against. In the JDC report, it was unanimously recommended that a full enquiry be conducted into the applicant’s serious and comprehensively documented allegations.
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