By Naïma Abdellaoui
The writer, who describes herself as a concerned international civil servant, is a staff representative and member of the UN Office of Geneva (UNOG) Staff Union Executive Bureau.
GENEVA | 9 July 2025 (IDN) — Budget cuts should not justify mass job cuts. This violates international administrative law and sound management practices. The UN faces chronic funding shortfalls, yet it ignores longstanding problems in collecting assessed contributions. Slashing posts under these conditions is both unlawful and inefficient.
Here’s the breakdown:
Legality: Highly Questionable (Often Unlawful)
- Violates Non-Discrimination: If the selection of posts for abolition uses criteria like age (e.g., disproportionately affecting staff over 55) or lacks objective, transparent justification linked to genuineoperational needs, it constitutes discrimination. Tribunals routinely strike down such actions.
- Fails the “Balancing Test”: Law requires a genuine balancing of organizational needs against staff interests. Prioritizing short-term budget fixes caused by member state delinquency over the catastrophic impact on experienced, vulnerable staff fails this test miserably. The “organizational interest” (solvency) is undermined by the UN’s own failure to enforce its Charter against delinquent states, making the staff sacrifice arbitrary and disproportionate.
- Arbitrary & Capricious Action: Abolishing posts based primarily on the symptom (cash flow crisis) while ignoring the disease (unpaid assessments) and avoiding available remedies (Article 19) lacks a rational, good-faith basis. This makes the dismissals potentially arbitrary.
- Due Process Deficiencies: A process perceived as targeting groups or lacking transparency in post-selection criteria undermines fair procedure. Coercive “voluntary” schemes under threat of worse outcomes further violate due process rights.
- Misuse of “Financial Exigency”: While financial crisis can justify reductions, tribunals scrutinize whether the crisis is genuine and unavoidable. Chronic underfunding due to enforceable member state obligations, where the organization fails to use its legal tools, weakens the claim of true exigency justifying staff terminations.
Efficiency: Deeply Flawed & Short-Sighted
- Loss of Critical Capacity: Targeting often higher-grade, experienced staff (like those over 55) eliminates irreplaceable institutional knowledge, expertise, and networks. Rebuilding this takes years and immense resources, directly hindering mandate delivery and crisis response – the UN’s core function.
- Morale & Trust Collapse: Discriminatory or haphazard cuts devastate morale among allstaff. Loyalty evaporates, recruitment of top talent suffers, and the UN becomes seen as an insecure employer, undermining its ability to attract and retain the best.
- Hypocrisy Erodes Credibility: Implementing discriminatory cuts while advocating globally for rights (e.g., a new convention on the rights of older persons) destroys the UN’s moral authority and legitimacy, crippling its diplomatic power – its most vital asset.
- Addresses Symptom, Not Disease: Cutting posts solves nothing if member states continue withholding funds. It creates a vicious cycle: cuts weaken the UN, making it less effective and less compelling for states to pay, leading to more cuts. It rewards delinquency.
- High Transactional Costs: Severance packages, potential litigation costs (from successful tribunal challenges), recruitment costs for (less experienced) replacements, and lost productivity during transition create significant financial drains, often offsetting purported savings.
- Undermines Long-Term Stability: This approach fosters constant uncertainty and restructuring based on fluctuating payments, preventing strategic planning and stable program implementation.
The Crucial Distinction to be made is between:
- Legitimate Efficiency-Driven Restructuring: Abolishing posts based on verified shifts in mandates, technological obsolescence, or demonstrable redundancy using objective criteria can be legal and efficient. This focuses on work, not workers. AND
- Illegitimate Budget-Cut-Driven Reductions: Abolishing posts primarily as a quick fix for budget shortfalls caused by external factors (unpaid dues) the organization refuses to address through its own mechanisms, especially using discriminatory or opaque criteria, is legally precarious and strategically inept.
Conclusion
Resorting to post reductions driven solely or primarily by budget constraints stemming from member state arrears, without exhausting all diplomatic and Charter-based remedies (like enforcing Article 19) and while employing potentially discriminatory or haphazard criteria, is:
- Legally Vulnerable: It risks findings of discrimination, arbitrariness, and violation of due process by administrative tribunals, leading to costly reinstatements or compensation.
- Operationally Inefficient: It sacrifices vital expertise, destroys morale, incurs hidden costs, and fails to solve the underlying revenue problem, ultimately weakening the UN’s ability to fulfill its mandates.
- Strategically Bankrupt: It erodes the UN’s moral authority, rewards member state bad faith, and prioritizes short-term political expediency over long-term institutional health and effectiveness.
True legality and efficiency demand confronting the root cause – member state delinquency – through the UN’s own powerful mechanisms (Article 19), while managing any necessary workforce changes through strictly lawful, non-discriminatory, and genuinely needs-based processes. Cutting loyal staff to cover for delinquent states is neither.
Image: The UNOG Staff Union represents the staff of the UN Secretariat in Geneva.
