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The US Administration has indicated that same gender relations of American staff employed by the UN are to be recognized for the purposes of benefits and entitlements. This recognition is the responsibility of the UN to administer, not the US Mission. Neutral criteria are used as the basis for recognition in a given instance, rather than reference to any domestic practice or jurisprudence.

 By a memo dated 1 March 2010, the US Mission to the UN has instructed the UN Secretariat to recognize the personal status of US staff members in same-sex unions on the basis of a signed affidavit, indicating “if an American United Nations staff member files such an affidavit, the United nations may accept that the United States Mission has verified the personal status of that staff member in connection with their entitlements or benefits.”

 What this means for the UN and the Funds and Programmes

 US nationals working for the UN and the Funds and Programmes, in which same-sex unions are recognized under ST/SGB/2004/13 and its equivalents, can ask for their personal status to be recorded as non-single (the actual terminology used varies, in IMIS the category is "married and related"). According to the instructions of the US Mission, verification of the legitimacy of the union is to be performed by the UN as the staff member's employer on the basis of the signed affidavit (attached to this message), rather than by referring the matter to the US Mission. The affidavit alone is used for verification. No domestic US practice or jurisprudence is considered.

 What this means for the specialized agencies

 In the UN agencies which follow UN Secretariat policy on the recognition of same-sex unions, US staff members should draw the attention of their human resources departments to the memo.

Because those agencies mirror not just the recognition policy but also the verification procedure used by the UN, the instructions of the US mission to the UN in New York should apply in similar fashion.

 Note that the usual verification procedure at the UN consists of writing a letter to the Mission to the UN of the staff member's country of nationality and awaiting a "yes" or "no" decision. A handful of countries have instructed the UN to dispense with this letter, to handle the recognition process itself, and to assume their tacit agreement to recognition of their nationals' same-sex unions. However, the new US instruction is the first to prescribe the use of a signed affidavit unconnected to any national legislation, a policy that has existed for many years at the IMF and World Bank, and which was introduced in 2009 for US Foreign Service employees.