STU/67th Council/17/025
12 October 2017

202nd Session of the Executive Board of UNESCO

Document 202 EX/5

Follow-Up to Decisions and resolutions adopted by the Executive Board and the General Conference
at their previous sessions

Part IV

Human Resources Issues

ORAL STATEMENT BY THE UNESCO STAFF UNION (STU)

Thank you Mrs Chairperson, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen.

Once more, the STU would like to express its deep concern about the general situation of human resources in our Organization. Specifically, we continue to regret the massive use of temporary assistance , a large number of whom are performing core functions within the Organization. To this day, more than half of the Organization’s personnel consists of temporary staff, resulting in loss of institutional memory, discrimination between staff, and the undermining of the independence of the international civil service. Furthermore, even if the number of retired staff members hired as consultants has decreased, we know that unjustified exemptions are regularly granted.

The situation of the Medical Benefit Fund is critical. Since the publication of the ILOAT judgements last February, its governing body is inactive. The STU is counting on Members States to rectify the error of the Administration and go back to the situation prior to 2014, thereby enforcing the judgements of the ILOAT.

Concerning the human resources management strategy for 2017-2022 , the STU has been requesting for a long time that it includes clear goals and mechanisms, in which all levels of hierarchy are held accountable for their responsibilities in human resources management, including knowledge and skills development, career development planning and transparent mobility and recruitment processes.

The document submitted does not meet our expectations. There is no mention of each person’s responsibility in human resources management. For many years, the sense of responsibility is getting lost in our House: recommendations made by the Appeals or the Reports Boards, for example, are not followed up on by the Administration; instructions given by managers are not implemented. The force of inertia in our Organization is huge, and its consequences are multiple: frustration, demotivation, anger, resentment, and most of all the impression of a huge waste.

For this situation, we are blaming the Director-General, Director of human resource and some members of the Senior Management Team.

The financial crisis is real and we do not underestimating it. However,the implementation of decisions, the respect for the rules, the recognition and rewarding of skills do not have a financial cost , whereas procedures undertaken by staff members before the ILOAT to assert their rights are weighing down the budget of UNESCO. If little deals among friends, settling of accounts and harassment came to an end, our Organization, that we love so much, would be in better health.

A motivated staff, convinced that its leaders are just and competent, is an efficient staff. We hope that the new Director-General, whoever he or she is, would understand and achieve that goal.

Thank you for your attention.