According
to an article
in today’s Wall Street Journal, sexual harassment cases plague the United
Nations. As the WSJ reported, “many U.N. workers who have made or faced
accusations of sexual harassment say the current system for handling complaints
is arbitrary, unfair and mired in bureaucracy.” GAP’s blog covered this issue
in February (see here
and here).
According
to the WSJ article, the new UN internal justice system, which is set to launch
on July 1, will seek to “create a more independent and professional system for
resolving disputes, including sexual-harassment claims.” Although the new
justice system will be an improvement over the current one, it unfortunately
still falls short of both the recommendations
made by a panel of independent experts and international human and labor rights
standards.
It
should be noted that employees at intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) like
the United Nations are starting to challenge the immunities of these
institutions in national courts (the Brzak case mentioned in the WSJ article is
just one of several examples). If an IGO does not offer aggrieved individuals
independent, third party dispute resolution, waiver of sovereign immunity is
unavoidable to overcome the inherent, structural conflict of interest that
occurs when an organization is both the defendant and the judge.
-- Shelley Walden
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