UNAT Held or UNDT Pronouncements
The Tribunal rejected the application as not receivable ratione materiae as (1) the record indicates that the Applicant did not submit a request for request for management evaluation to the Management Advice and Evaluation Section as required under staff rule 11.2; and (2) the contested decision had no direct effect on the Applicant, no external legal effect, nor any adverse impact on the Applicant’s contractual employment rights.
Decision Contested or Judgment/Order Appealed
The Applicant, a former staff member, filed an application challenging the decision of the Assistant Secretary-General for Human Resources (“ASG/OHR”), Department of Management Strategy, Policy and Compliance (“DMSPC”) not to initiate an investigation and close the Applicant’s complaint alleging “[l]ong-term harassment, abuse of authority, humiliation, and retaliation suffered during the last four years of [his] career [2018 to 2022]”.
Legal Principle(s)
It is the established jurisprudence of the Appeals Tribunal that the Dispute Tribunal has the authority to satisfy itself that an application is receivable under art. 8 of its Statute (see, for instance, O’Neill 2011-UNAT-182, as affirmed in AAX 2024-UNAT-1504). The Appeals Tribunal has also held that the Dispute Tribunal may consider the receivability of an application as a preliminary matter before reviewing the merits of the case (see, for instance, Pellet 2010-UNAT-073). The Tribunal does not have power to waive the deadlines for the filing of requests for management evaluation or to make any exception to it (see, for instance, Costa 2010-UNAT-036). A contested decision is not a reviewable administrative decision under O’Brien 2023-UNAT-1313 because it did not produce a direct effect on the Applicant, did not have external legal effect, and did not directly or adversely impact the Applicant’s contractual employment rights.