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Moral damages – As held in Asariotis 2013-UNAT-309, damages for a moral injury may arise from a breach of the employee’s substantive entitlements arising from his or her contract of employment and/or from a breach of the procedural due process entitlements therein guaranteed (be they specifically designated in the Staff Regulations and Rules or arising from the principles of natural justice). Where the breach is of a fundamental nature, the breach may of itself give rise to an award of moral damages, not in any punitive sense for the fact of the breach having occurred, but rather by virtue of...

Lateral reassignment: The Tribunal held that the decision to laterally transfer the Applicant was lawful as it fulfilled the conditions for such a transfer as set out in Rees. The new post was at the staff member’s grade; the responsibilities involved corresponded to his level; the functions to be performed were commensurate with the Applicant’s competence and skills and the Applicant had substantial experience in the field. Reasons for the contested decision: The Tribunal held that the Applicant’s complaints about the lack of or the adequacy of reasons for the decision were unsubstantiated...

Receivability –The Applicant’s patience in waiting for the Secretary-General to decide on when to grant him appropriate remedies cannot be used against him. It is not in contention that as soon as he was informed that the Secretary-General had decided that the appropriate remedies he was promised meant no remedies at all, the Applicant approached the Tribunal. The Applicant’s claims in regard to the other administrative decisions of tampering with a published vacancy announcement and the membership of the former incumbent of the position on the interview panel which were affirmed in management...

The instruments invoked by the Applicant did not lend support to the contention about illegality of the abolition of his post occasioned by the fact that a post of a similar functionality would have been subsequently created within ECA. No violation of procedures envisaged in these instruments has been shown. Specifically, neither of these instruments obligated ES/ECA to carry out redeployment or classification of existing Regional Advisor posts in priority over creation of new posts at ECA. The Tribunal found no abuse, arbitrariness or unfairness in the abolition of the Applicant’s post...

Pursuant to staff rule 3.17(ii), the Applicant was required to make a written claim to receive retroactive SPA “within one year following the date on which [she] would have been entitled to the initial payment”. This request should have been made within one year of 1 December 2009, that is, by or before 1 December 2010. However, it was only on 5 September 2011 that the Applicant wrote an interoffice memorandum requesting an extension of her SPA at the P-2 level from 1 December 2009 to the then-present time to account for the additional functions that she had been performing. The Applicant...

Noting that there is nothing in the strict interpretation of section 1.2 of ST/SGB/2008/5 to exclude a series of discrete acts performed by more than a single individual from constituting prohibited conduct for which the Organization bears responsibility, the Tribunal found that the Applicant’s allegations of institutionally enabled, or tolerated, harassment did not relate to one off incidents. Under ST/SGB/2008/5, the ES’s duty was to examine the complaint in its entirety to see whether it raised issues of prohibited conduct to which the Applicant may have still been suffering from. Instead...

The decision to refuse further medical evacuation was first notified to the Applicant on 15 July 2014 but he did not request management evaluation until 29 January 2017 after later requests for medical evacuation had been refused. The application was not receivable because subsequent reiterations of the same decision did not have the effect of resetting the clock for management evaluation.

Receivability The Respondent argued that the decision to discontinue the payment of SPA was notified to the Applicant on 10 September 2020 and since the Applicant failed to request a management evaluation by 10 November 2020, the application is not receivable. The Respondent’s argument was rejected. The Tribunal found that the contested decision is not the initial discontinuation of the payment of SPA but rather the the refusal to pay her SPA after certifying officer functions had been assigned to her, which was communicated to her on 25 July 2012. The Applicant timely requested a management...

The present case concerns a rebuttal process that was initiated in accordance with section 15.1 of ST/AI/2010/5. On 12 June 2017, the rebuttal panel issued its report recommending that the administration maintain the original overall rating of “partially meets performance expectations” and the Applicant’s placement on a performance improvement plan. In accordance with section 15.5 of ST/AI/2010/5, the performance rating of “partially meets performance expectations” became binding on the Applicant because of the rebuttal panel’s recommendation of 12 June 2017. In light of the foregoing, the...

it is undisputed that the Administration did not afford the Applicant written notice so he learnt about the non-renewal only upon the expiration of his fixed-term appointment. This practice, however, does not disable the right to seek review of the non-renewal decision by the UNDT. The Tribunal considers that the objective factual element as to the non-renewal of the Applicant’s appointment consists in the memorandum instructing the Applicant to commence his separation procedure, dated 4 January and delivered to the Applicant on 11 January 2016. Recalling that the Applicant sought information...