Selection decision

As a preliminary matter, UNAT denied the Appellant’s request for an oral hearing. UNAT held that the Appellant failed to discharge his burden of showing that the UNDT Judgment was defective or identifying grounds for appeal. In addition, UNAT held there was no basis for vacating the UNDT Judgment. UNAT held that the Appellant did not specifically contest the UNDT’s findings on receivability and that receivability was not therefore an issue before it. UNAT held that even if receivability was an issue before it, there was nothing provided by the Appellant to suggest that UNDT erred in its...

Starting with the presumption that official acts are regularly performed, UNAT agreed that the Administration acted in accordance with the Staff Regulations and Rules when it invited three roster candidates for an informal interview and made a final selection from the roster. Given the presumption of regularity was satisfied, the burden of proof shifted on the staff member who must demonstrate that he was not given fair and adequate consideration. This, the staff member failed to do. UNAT also agreed with the UNDT that the staff member can only challenge a specific administrative decision, and...

UNAT considered an appeal of the Judgment on the merits and a cross-appeal from the Commissioner-General on the receivability finding. UNAT held that the cross-appeal was receivable, however UNAT dismissed it in light of the Commissioner-General’s request that his cross-appeal not be examined should the appeal be dismissed and secondly, because UNAT did not detect any error in the UNRWA DT’s order which found that the application was receivable. On the merits of the appeal, UNAT held that Mr. AlMousa failed to establish any error in the UNRWA DT Judgment, although his appeal undoubtedly...

The evidence of procedural errors and irregularities supported the Dispute Tribunal’s findings of fact that lead to the justifiable conclusion that, had the irregularities not occurred, Mr Russo-Got had a foreseeable and significant chance of selection given his qualifications. The approach adopted by UNDT and by which UNDT assessed Mr.; Russo-Got’s chances of being selected for the post as one in five was reasonable. In the absence of errors of fact or law by UNDT, UNAT defers to its discretion in awarding and quantifying the pecuniary damages.

UNDT correctly found that Ms Mokrova’s application was not receivable ratione materiae because she filed a request for management evaluation beyond the 60 days of the notification of the contested decision by the Under-Secretary-General for DSS.

UNDT preliminarily rejected the Applicant’s requests for recusal, holding that there were no longer any grounds for ruling on those requests since the UNDT President previously rejected those requests. Concerning the first application, UNDT held that the Applicant did not establish the illegality of the election of JC and that his application for the election to be declared null and void must be rejected. With regard to the Applicant’s request that all decisions taken by the Internal Justice Council be rescinded, UNDT held that it is clear from General Assembly Resolution 62/228 of 22 December...

Outcome: Application dismissed as the preponderance of evidence demonstrated that the applicant’s candidature had been given full and fair consideration.

The former Staff Regulations provided that: “For the purpose of these Regulations, the expressions ‘United Nations Secretariat’, ‘staff member’ or ‘staff’ shall refer to all staff members of the Secretariat […].” Former staff rule 104.10 (a) prohibited the recruitment of the father, mother, son, daughter, brother or sister of a staff member, except where another person equally well qualified could not be recruited. It results from the foregoing that candidates who have a family relationship with a staff member working for an entity part of the UN Secretariat are precluded from recruitment to a...

The advertisement of a vacancy announcement is an action in rem, not in personam. In the present case, the Applicant failed to prove that the failure on the part of the Respondent to advertise the total number of posts to be filled in the vacancy announcement was a material error which violated his rights. With respect to the various allegations of discrimination, favouritism, corruption, lack of transparency, forgery, gambling, impunity, and abuse of authority in the selection system at stake, the Applicant failed to prove his pleas

The applicant, then a staff member, applied and was short-listed for the Galaxy-advertised post of ASG/DESA. The notice stated that the candidacies of all UN staff members were to be “considered first”, that is to say, in priority to external candidates, and via a procedure akin to that of ST/AI/2006/3. The person appointed was not a UN staff member and the applicant challenged the decision to appoint them. At around the time of the applicant’s application for the post, he was the subject of various widely publicized investigations. The respondent initially claimed that the decision not to...