Judge Tibulya
The Respondent’s argument that the Applicant did not request management evaluation of the contested decision within 60 days was rooted in the erroneous belief that the MOU, which expressly states that it constituted notice that the Applicant’s appointment would not be renewed beyond 29 February 2020 and that she would be separated as a result, related to the Applicants general right to be reabsorbed into MINUSMA. The right to a general lien is intrinsic to a secondment, meaning that it is inalienable and so the Applicant could not have contracted herself out of it. The notice of separation and...
The established facts qualified as misconduct under the Staff Regulations and Rules. There was evidence that the totality of the circumstances, including mitigating factors such as the Applicant’s long service with the Organization and her admission, albeit only after the Organization’s discovery of her fraud, were considered in keeping with set principles. There was basis for the assertion that the practice of the Secretary-General in disciplinary matters shows that measures at the stricter end of the spectrum have normally been imposed by the Organization in cases involving falsification of...
The contested decision arose from an agreement signed on 21 April 2020 between the Applicant and UNICEF to terminate her appointment. If the Applicant had wished to contest the circumstances of her termination agreement, she ought to have requested management evaluation by 20 June 2020. She however, submitted her request on 18 January 2021, almost seven months later, and outside the 60-day period. The request for management evaluation was time-barred and thus the application was not receivable.
The Tribunal found that the Applicant’s right to a full and fair consideration of his candidature was not violated. It was thus held that the Applicant’s allegation that the selection process was tainted by extraneous considerations, ill-motive and bias not borne out in evidence. Accordingly, the application was dismissed.
UNDT held that the application was receivable ratione materiae under Staff Rule 11.2(c) and Article 81.(c) of the UNDT Statute. The Applicant submitted and Appendix D claim on 4 December 2019 and a decision was made and communicated to him on 10 December 2019. He submitted that decision for management evaluation in accordance with Staff Rule 11.2(c) and Article 8.1(c) of the UNDT Statute. UNDT held that the 6 June 2019 email, in which the Advisory Board on Compensation Claims (ABCC) thanked the Applicant for bringing a matter to its attention, was not in response to a compensation claim by the...
The Tribunal found that the application insofar as it related to a 26 September 2019 email was not receivable ratione materiae because that decision was not final. It did not produce a direct legal impact on the Applicant’s legal status or have a legal effect on his terms of appointment or contract of employment. The applicable legal decision was a Circular dated 18 October 2019. That Circular confirmed to the Applicant that he had not been selected for any of the posts he had applied for in 2019. The Tribunal found the application irreceivable in relation to three decisions contested by the...
The impugned decision did not produce any direct legal consequence on the Applicant’s terms of appointment or his contract of employment since he had an FTA which did not carry any expectancy, legal or otherwise, of renewal or conversion, irrespective of length of service. The Tribunal held that the Applicant’s assertion that he had a legitimate expectation of a two-year contract renewal as was usually the case ran counter to the clear and consistent jurisprudence of the Appeals Tribunal that the renewal of the appointment of a staff member on successive contracts did not, in and of itself...
The impugned decision did not produce any direct legal consequence on the Applicant’s terms of appointment or his contract of employment since he had an FTA which did not carry any expectancy, legal or otherwise, of renewal or conversion, irrespective of length of service. The Tribunal held that the Applicant’s assertion that he had a legitimate expectation of a two-year contract renewal as was usually the case ran counter to the clear and consistent jurisprudence of the Appeals Tribunal that the renewal of the appointment of a staff member on successive contracts did not, in and of itself...
The Tribunal found that the Administration discharged the burden of establishing that misconduct had occurred with regard to most of the allegations and that the established facts legally amounted to misconduct under the regulations and rules. There were no due process violations in the investigation and in the disciplinary process leading up to the disciplinary sanction against the Applicant.
The fact that the application was filed on 25 June 2019, a day after the deadline, was not disputed. The contested decision was sent to the Applicant on 25 March 2019, though he maintained that he saw it on 26 March 2019. Even if the Applicant considered 26 March 2019 to have been the date of receipt of the contested decision, the deadline for filing the application would still have been Monday, 24 June 2019. The argument that the Respondent should be considered to have consented to the jurisdiction of the Court since he failed to raise the jurisdictional challenge in time was found to be...
The Tribunal found that the ABCC considered all relevant matters in arriving at the decision, and that the impugned decision was legal, rational, and procedurally correct. The submission that the application was not receivable rationae materiae and rationae temporis was without merit and was rejected. Contrary to the Respondent’s assertion, the ABCC’s letter of 29 December 2017 was an administrative decision given that it was arrived at after the Applicant, in response to the ABCC’s email of 25 May 2017 inviting him to furnish new evidence. He furnished new evidence relating to each of the...
The Tribunal noted that the allegations of poor behaviour and the fact that those behaviours undermined the Applicant’s capacity to discharge the responsibilities assigned to him in an effective manner were not included in his performance evaluations. The fact that the allegations later became the subject of the email to the USGs of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the Department of Field Service and formed the basis for the decision to reassign the Applicant to another office showed that there was no transparency on the part of the Respondent in the matter. The Tribunal also...
The Tribunal noted the uncontroverted evidence that the Applicant gave unsolicited responses in line with the Panel’s questioning format which he seems to have been privy to. The Panel had no opportunity to ask him questions in areas such as gender since he gave successive examples in different aspects of the interview areas in a short time span. This evidence supported the finding that the Applicant’s conduct did not facilitate his meaningful engagement with the Panel beyond what took place. He could not argue therefore that the Panel did not probe to elicit more appropriate examples from him...
The decision not to renew the Applicant’s appointment beyond 15 January 2020 was superseded by subsequent decisions that resulted in the Applicant’s appointment being renewed to June 2020. Other than alleging that bias and an abuse of authority led to the superseded decision, the Applicant failed to demonstrate to the Tribunal how his rights remained adversely affected by the contested decision.
The Tribunal found that the contested decision in this case was clearly not based on direct organisational authority and it concerned an area protected from employer interference, the internal affairs of a Staff Union. It did not produce a sufficiently direct legal consequence to the legal order of the Applicant as a staff member.
The Tribunal found that it lacked jurisdiction to review preparatory steps of an administrative decision and rejected the application as not receivable.
The Tribunal noted that the complaint about the long period it took for the Applicant to be paid and the dispute over the amount of the pension paid to him were beyond the scope of the application since they were not subjected to management evaluation as required by art. 8.1(c) of the Dispute Tribunal’s Statute and staff rule 11.2(a). The Tribunal found that the Administration had proper legal grounds for refusing to issue the separation notification to the UNJSPF in accordance with staff rule 3.18(c)(ii), ST/AI/2009/1 (Recovery of overpayments made to staff members) and ST/AI/155/Rev.2 as...
The information in the documents on record pointed to purely work-related disagreements between the Applicant and her supervisor. The Tribunal rejected the complaint that UNICEF’s Deputy Executive Director, Management (DED/M) did not take into consideration the facts in their entirety and misunderstood her statements when conducting the management evaluation. The Tribunal agreed with the finding that there was no evidence of abuse of authority or deliberate misrepresentation of facts by the Applicant’s supervisor. The Tribunal held that the Applicant’s complaint did not raise any impropriety...
The United Nations Dispute Tribunal had no jurisdiction to adjudicate on the Applicant’s dispute with ICAO.
The Registry of the Tribunal has, in this case, tried to get in touch with the Applicant and her Counsel on record to no avail. While the Applicant has not expressly indicated a desire to abandon proceedings, the Tribunal is in a position where it simply cannot find the Applicant or Counsel acting on her behalf and so, can only assume that she is no longer interested in pursuing this matter any further.