Teresa Bravo is an Appeal’s Court Judge, Former Judge of the UNDT and the Judge of Asian Development Bank Administrative Tribunal.

International organizations enjoy jurisdictional immunity from member states, an essential instrument of their institutional autonomy, addressed at avoiding political interference in the execution of their mandates. These organizations have created internal justice systems which are totally distinct and independent from national jurisdictions since the applicable rules, procedures and statutes are those approved by internal legislative bodies.

Consequently, these systems have their own internal tribunals and appeal boards, which produce their own set of jurisprudence. Based on its case law, a specific body of international legal principles has emerged.

In 2010, the United Nations implemented a reform of its internal justice system and created a two tier system composed of two tribunals: a first instance named the United Nations Dispute Tribunal (UNDT) and an Appeals’ Tribunal named UNAT.

A public vacancy announcement was advertised worldwide and external judges, lawyers and other experts in the fields of administrative and employment law were recruited to act as judges in the internal justice system. I was one of the UNDT judges, based in Geneva, who worked full time between 2016 and 2023.

The UNDT has three seats; Geneva, Nairobi and New York. It adjudicates grievances from UN staff members or former staff members (working for the Secretariat or for some of the specialized agencies like UNICEF, FAO, UNHCR, etc.) from all over the world, related to employment issues or disciplinary cases.

UNAT, composed of seven judges, is the second and final instance for appeals against UNDT’s decisions, has its seat in New York and gathers four times a year.

Fourteen years have passed since the implementation of a reform that has transformed an obsolete peer-review system into a modern, two-tier, and professionalized internal justice system.

Progress was made in many areas but there is still a long way to go before the system matures and meets stakeholder expectations. Since its inception, the system has faced fierce criticism and encountered different obstacles. On several occasions, both internal and external forces have tried to pressure and influence the jurisprudence of both UNAT and UNDT.

Unilateral changes in the statutes of the Tribunals (without prior discussion with relevant parties), attempts to limit the scope of judicial review and sometimes too critical (and unfair) internal justice reports were disruptive and did not contribute to the credibility of the UN internal justice system.

Framed as a hybrid jurisdiction (between labor and administrative law) the UN internal justice system is limited in many ways and, as a consequence, it cannot be considered as an ‘equivalent’ to any national justice system.

In fact, one of those limitations is the fact that UN tribunals cannot review GA Resolutions, i.e., judges in the UN are not allowed to assess the legality of the GA Resolutions which, in practical terms, are placed at the top level of the normative hierarchy in the UN.

UN tribunals cannot, for instance review the legality of the GA Resolutions, even in cases where it is evident that those Resolutions will have an impact on staff member’s employment conditions and, due to the hierarchy of norms, will affect the overall legal framework of the organization.

There are at least other three relevant limits to the jurisdiction of the UN administrative tribunals:

1. Reintegration is not mandatory but optional;

2. As a general rule, compensation for wrongdoing cannot exceed two years base net salary;

3. Staff associations do not have legal standing before UN tribunals.

In addition, the creation of the UN tribunals composed of externally recruited judges has also faced resistance and skepticism from the outset. Resistance came first, from those who were already working in the JABs and intended to apply for and work as ‘judges’ in the newly created tribunals and were not allowed to do so. Resistance came also from managers who perceived judges as a threat to their authority and, finally, from staff members themselves, who did not believe an external entity, would be able to understand and adjudicate their grievances. Skepticism came from the fact that even the most professional and experienced national judges need time to adapt, to get familiar with and understand not only the Organization’s legal framework, but also its culture, values, and managerial practices.

Another specific feature of the UN internal justice system is the absence of legal standing for staff associations before the internal UN tribunals. This issue is strictly linked to the predominant administrative nature of the UN justice system.

Based on the concept of administrative decision, the system was not designed to contemplate judicial review of legal acts per se, but only to allow legal control over administrative acts.

The argument commonly used is that UN tribunals are not constitutional courts, and therefore it is not possible to review the legality of norms as this task can only be performed incidentally. Here lies one of the main differences in relation to continental labor law systems in which unions and staff associations have legal standing before labor courts, where the legality of norms can be questioned and class actions admitted to defend/ preserve “collective or bargain” rights.

It is unlikely that the UN justice system would evolve towards a more “labor-friendly approach” as this would mean a revolution in the way it was conceived.

 Nonetheless, it is possible to turn it into a more staff-friendly system if some changes are introduced, if judges have labor law experience, and legal teams are exposed to different settings and other normative systems.

Although my experience with the UNDT was overall very positive and enriching I expect the system to mature and evolve in the right direction, i.e, to broaden the scope of its jurisdiction and to grant staff members the right to be reinstated if their termination has been found unlawful.