2018-UNAT-870, Cherneva
UNAT rejected the request for an oral hearing. UNAT held, noting that the Appellant appeared to be restating the same claims she made before UNDT, that she did not identify any grounds for her appeal nor demonstrate that UNDT committed any error of fact or law in arriving at its decision. UNAT held that UNDT fully and fairly considered the case, without errors of law or fact. UNAT dismissed the appeal and affirmed the UNDT judgment.
The Applicant contested UNICEF’s claims that a) placing her on special leave without pay (SLWOP) was an administrative error; b) the UNICEF Ethics Office’s decision on her case was delayed due to her fault and that such delay did not prejudice the outcome of the review by the Ethics Office; and c) her complaint raised workplace issues rather than violations of her rights and breaches of UNICEF rules. UNDT rejected the application in its entirety. UNDT considered that since the SLWOP decision had been rescinded, the matter was moot. UNDT found that the assessment and findings made by the UNICEF Ethics Office on the Applicant’s request for whistle-blower protection could not be subject to judicial review since it was not an administrative decision, and, therefore, it could not examine the delays that occurred in the framework of that assessment. On the Applicant’s challenge to the finding that her complaint raised workplace issues rather than violations of her rights, UNDT found it was not receivable ratione materiae since it could not identify any administrative decision subject to judicial review.
The appeals procedure is of a corrective nature and not an opportunity for a dissatisfied party to reargue his or her case. An appellant has the burden of satisfying UNAT that the judgment he or she seeks to challenge is defective and it follows that an appellant must identify the alleged defects in the impugned judgment and state the grounds relied upon in asserting that the judgment is defective. Compensation cannot be awarded when no illegality has been established; it cannot be granted when there is no breach of the staff member’s rights or administrative wrongdoing in need of repair.