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UNAT considered an appeal by the Secretary-General. UNAT held that the Secretary-General discharged his burden to establish the facts of misconduct by clear and convincing evidence in relation to all the allegations of wrongdoing regarding the special education grants. UNAT held that the evidence proved not only fraud in the form of false accounting, but also the uttering of forged and falsified documents to the Organisation. UNAT held that the staff member’s behaviour constituted serious misconduct by which she enriched herself by approximately USD 50,000 at the expense of the Organisation...

The UNDT judgment was appealed by both parties. On the lawfulness of the decision to withhold salary, UNAT held that Mr Harris had not identified any grounds for his appeal and failed to demonstrate that UNDT had committed any error of fact or law in arriving at its decision. UNAT held that Mr Harris’ case was fully and fairly considered and could find no error of law or fact in its decisions. On the cancellation of health insurance, UNAT found no reason to differ from the UNDT finding that Mr Harris did not make the appropriate payments to reinstate his health insurance coverage, thus...

The Applicant submitted three sets of education grant claims, on 19 November 2012, 12 July 2013, and 8 September 2014 in respect to the relevant school years. The Tribunal found that on 14 February 2013, 11 September 2013, and 2 October 2014, respectively, OHRM made decisions not to process the three claims, pending settlement of the Applicant’s claim in respect to the 2011–2012 school year. It was alleged that the Applicant had submitted misleading or false documents in respect to this claim. The Applicant submitted a request for management evaluation in respect of all three of his education...

The Tribunal held that the managers concerned acted in accordance with the obligations placed on them by sections 9 and 10 of ST/AI/400. Given the fact that the Applicant absented himself from work in Sector East without proper authorization and failed to heed the advice and requests sent to him, the Organization did not act unlawfully in taking steps to place him on SLWOP. Moreover, it was lawful for the Organization to take steps to recover payments made in advance in respect of education grant and travel in circumstances where such advances were not utilised for the purpose for which they...

The Tribunal (a) granted the application in part, (b) rescinded the contested decision in part and replaced the excessive and unlawful disciplinary measure of dismissal with the lesser sanction of separation from service with termination indemnity; (c) ordered the judgment to be included in the Applicant’s official status file and all references relating to the disciplinary sanction of dismissal to be removed from this file and to be replaced with the new sanction, namely separation from service with termination indemnity; and (d) in the event that the Respondent would decide not to rescind...

The Applicant’s education grant claim for his four-year-old son did not fall under the exception of section 2 of ST/AI/2011/4 Amend 1. To the extent that the entitlement for private tuition in the mother tongue of the; Applicant was part and parcel of the education grant and not separate from it, the Applicant would be entitled to it only where the child in respect of whom he makes the claim is entitled to an education grant. This Tribunal cannot decide as to whether the Applicant ought to have been allowed during the management evaluation process to review any documents and whether failure to...

The distinction between reimbursement of 100 per cent of admissible educational expenses for a child with a disability who attends a regular education institution depends on whether the necessary special arrangements are provided by the educational institution or not. If the institution does not provide such arrangements, the special teaching expenses are reimbursed at 100% but the educational expenses are reimbursed at the regular rate of 75%. Sec. 14.1 has to be read in conjunction with sec. 12 of the ST/AI/2011/4, which defines admissible expenses for the special education grant as...

The Tribunal noted that in accordance with ST/AI/2018/1, eligibility of international staff members for education grant in respect of their children is to be determined by inter alia the conditions that: a) the child is in full-time attendance at an educational institution at the primary level or above, and b) the child is five years of age or older at the beginning of the academic year, or the child reaches the age of five within three months of the beginning of the school year. The Tribunal found that UNICEF correctly considered that at both periods for which the Applicant applied for...

The Tribunal dismissed the application for the following reasons: the facts had been established to the requisite standard of clear and convincing evidence because the Applicant failed to provide any evidence to contradict the Respondent’s fundamental findings on the objective and subjective elements of the impugned conduct; the established facts qualified as misconduct because the Applicant failed to act with the diligence required of staff applying for education grant entitlements pursuant to ST/AI/2011/4; the sanction was not disproportionate because it was not the most severe sanction for...