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MARKING WORLD HUMANITARIAN DAY, UN LAUDS HEROIC EFFORTS ON THE FRONT LINES

The United Nations will mark the second-ever World Humanitarian Day on Thursday by paying tribute to the life-saving work carried out by aid workers around the globe, often in perilous places, to help those whose lives have been torn asunder by conflict, natural disasters and other crises.

Events will be held at UN offices and peacekeeping missions worldwide, with many focusing on those personnel at the front lines who have been killed in the cause of assisting people in need.

Last year, 102 humanitarian workers lost their lives, compared with 30 deaths among aid workers in 1999. In addition, nearly 280 aid workers were victims of security incidents, more the quadruple the number one decade ago.

The General Assembly proclaimed 19 August as World Humanitarian Day two years ago to commemorate the 2003 Canal Hotel bombing in Baghdad, which claimed the lives of 22 UN staff members, including the world body’s top envoy in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and wounded more than 150 people.

This session was particularly onerous and some of the outcomes were quite disappointing for staff.  This was most notably the case concerning the allowance for a second household for staff assigned to non-family duty stations.  As the Commission did not approve the proposals made by the ICSC technical working group (ICSC/71/R.16), the Commission retired to private sessions to work out a solution. After a week of discussions in private, informal and plenary sessions, the result of “harmonization” was a new allowance for peacekeeping staff, which satisfied the UN administration, but at the same time seriously let down the organizations currently using the Special Operations Approach (SOA). If approved by the General Assembly, staff in organizations currently applying the SOA scheme would see the allowance for a second household reduced by up to more than 60% between now and 2015. This move will likely make it more difficult for the specialized agencies to recruit staff for work in non-family duty stations while at the same time facilitating recruitment for peacekeeping positions. Ironically, it is just this type of competition between agencies that the so-called ‘harmonization’ of conditions of service is meant to prevent! FICSA has its advocacy work cut out for itself as a strong campaign against the reduced allowance will need to target this year’s Fifth Committee representatives.

11th Annual Conference of Staff Associations of International Organizations (CSAIO).

European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)

385, route de Meyrin

Geneva, Switzerland

Tuesday 28 October (Afternoon) and Friday 29 October 2010

Review Panel Judges See a Culture of U.N. Secrecy By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

UNITED NATIONS — Independent judges appointed to revamp the way the United Nations reviews decisions on matters like hiring, firing, promotions and raises are accusing Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of shielding an unhealthy culture of secrecy and trying to undermine the new system.

The United Nations Dispute Tribunal, inaugurated last July to replace a process so deteriorated that employees challenging employment decisions sometimes waited years for answers, has succeeded in shrinking a backlog of about 300 cases.

But some of the decisions issued by the tribunal contend that Mr. Ban and the highest levels of management are determined to preserve a system in which their personnel decisions remain absolute. One judge even characterized their lack of cooperation as “an attack on the rule of law.”