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STU/70th Council/23/023
11 October 2023

217th Session of the Executive Board of UNESCO

Oral Statement by the UNESCO Staff Union (STU)

Thank you, Mr. Chairperson,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear colleagues,

STU welcomes the return of the United States of America and the impact this will have on a strengthened multilateralism, as well as on UNESCO's programme implementation capacities. However, we must avoid thinking that this alone will solve all our problems, because these are largely structural in nature.

I would like to refer first to health and well-being of staff: if nothing changes, UNESCO is and will remain an organization with one of the highest levels of stress and job dissatisfaction in the entire UN system, mainly due to recurrent work overload and toxic relations between supervisors and supervisees. The UN Joint Inspection Unit's report on mental health and well-being includes alarming data that we have already analyzed, but also important recommendations that we invite the Administration to integrate into its practices. To this end, STU urges the Administration to set up a working group, involving staff associations, to draw up proposals for implementing these recommendations.

Looking even further ahead, STU demands that any decision on After-Service Health Insurance (ASHI) coverage should no longer be postponed, and that stable and appropriate financial resources should be identified already within the framework of the draft 42C/5 program and budget.

Mr. Chairperson, Excellencies,

STU appreciates the efforts to integrate the entire workforce (staff and affiliated personnel) into the human resources management strategy, and particularly welcomes the improvement in the contractual conditions of service contracts. However, the fact that affiliated staff now account for more than 50% of the total workforce raises fundamental questions, which have been little discussed to date:

1. At a time when current events are a dramatic daily reminder that UNESCO's mission is far from complete in this suffering world, this change in the composition of UNESCO's workforce weakens the very notion of the International Civil Service, which is responsible for embodying the ideals of the United Nations and its specialized agencies. What kind of international organization are we, when more than half our staff are not part of the recognized international civil service and employed on temporary and, sometimes, precarious contracts?
2. What about the right of all staff members, affiliates included, to be represented by a staff association and to access internal justice mechanisms?
3. In our field offices, too many service contracts are still of long duration despite covering crucial functions, in flagrant contradiction with their temporary nature. STU urges that, as part of the ongoing reform, field offices be provided with the regular staff needed to perform their essential tasks.

Implementing a human resources management strategy requires sound, transparent recruitment and performance appraisal processes. It is clear that these processes can and must be further improved, by tackling a number of obvious weaknesses:

1. How can the Appointments Review Board (ARB) fulfill its function if, after observing irregularities, it can only give an opinion, easily ignored and disregarded, even when fundamental rules relating to geographical representation or gender balance are not respected?
2. All too often, we observe that external candidates are preferred to qualified internal candidates, which undermines the very basis of any career development policy.
3. Similarly, performance appraisal is still too easily manipulated or used superficially, to cover up the shortcomings of certain managers as well as to harm certain colleagues who we would like to keep away from certain positions, or even from the Organization itself.
4. UNESCO does too little to recognize and systematically reward merit or achievement, and STU calls for the merit-based promotion system, which worked in the past, to be reinstated as a career development strategy complementary to competitive recruitment.

Developing a career within UNESCO is an obstacle course, impossible for too many staff. The absence of a human resources management culture, at all levels, greatly limits the Organization's efficiency and contributes to making it less attractive to the most qualified talent, both internal and external. That's why we're asking sectors and management to pay more attention to candidates' human resources management skills when recruiting at grade P4 and above.

Mr. Chairman, Excellencies,

STU welcomes the fact that the Human Resources Management Strategy recognizes the need to improve the internal justice system. In this respect, we would first of all like to ask the Administration to do everything in its power to reduce the time taken to process cases at the Appeals Board, which is currently far too long. We would also ask that colleagues in the field be given the opportunity to be physically present at hearings concerning them. Finally, a fair system of internal justice should enable staff to be assisted by a lawyer at appeals board hearings, an assistance which the administration does not deny itself when it attends the hearings with its entire team of legal advisors!

On behalf of STU, I thank you for your attention.