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Archive Introduction

CAIO speech    

Justice Geoffrey Robertson’s speech at the inaugural ball held at Hotel des Bergues in Geneva, Switzerland on Friday 1 October 2004 to launch the Center for Accountability of International Organizations (CAIO)

It is a pleasure to attend the launch of the Association CAIO, the Centre for Accountability of International Organizations, an Association founded to assist victims of harassment and mobbing within the United Nations and to promote accountability in the UN through test case action reforms to encourage the United Nations to treat staff in accordance with those standards that they themselves have promulgated to other nations.

In many cases, I have occasion to visit international tribunals and to observe the working conditions within the international system of organizations which are often difficult and strained, particularly in the field.  My own staff in the UN’s Sierra Leone War Crimes Tribunal have come down with disease and suffered other malaises.

This aside, there are particular dangers including psychological bullying, or “mobbing” which may easily arise within the large and often bureaucratic nature of the international system of organizations; partly due to the fact that many of the workers are on short-term contracts of different lengths, contributing to fierce competition for contract renewal.  The United Nations brings together staff from many different cultures and with many different value systems.  Through rivalry, or through malice or ignorance, this may lead to a phenomenon known as “bullying”.

Each international organization must set out fair and satisfactory standards reflected in regulations by which they must be properly governed in accordance with the principles of the rule of law, in order to conform to minimum workplace standards for dispute resolution as they are upheld throughout advanced legal systems of the world. 

I am sorry to say that neither the United Nations nor indeed any of the international organizations which comprise its system of agencies have yet adopted the policies and practices which conform to international standards.  The reasons are partly historic.  The original UN tribunals were established just after World War II, at a time when civil or employment rights were not clearly defined.  Even in criminal law we only need to think back to the start of the century to see a dramatic difference in legal standards which were applied at that time. 

At the trials which took place at Nuremberg, the legal standards and rules which were applied at that time would be queried by today’s standards.  The public debate was whether the criminals should be shot; it was US Supreme Court Judge and Chief Prosecutor Jackson who insisted “We want these trials to be remembered by our children with pride”.  The hearing which took place was as fair as the times then permitted.  Joseph Stalin who considered that a trial was fair, so long as the accused was shot in the head.  1945 was the year when the ILO Administrative Tribunal was founded, a year when human rights were still in their infancy. 

The concept of a fair trial as it is now found in the European Convention of Human Rights, the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights and other international treaty law was not recognized.  Human Rights have slowly gained legitimacy along with concepts like freedom of speech and the right to privacy.

These fundamental rights also deserve to be honoured in the work place; now we have an acceptance by the nations states that due process rights should be a part of any internal adjudicatory tribunal.  But we have this anomaly, and it really is an unacceptable anomaly, that because international organizations truly are a law unto themselves, they are permitted, by self regulation, to avoid the direct application of the standards set out in the international covenants I mentioned above. These standards are now complied with by right in any advanced nation under national law, however the UN immunity currently prevents the direct application of these standards of international law upon the internally regulated administrative law system.  But of course, immunity as a concept is gradually being eroded. 

In my own court it has for some offences been done away with – diplomatic immunity is gradually being eroded in relation to serious crimes.  The total diplomatic fines evaded through immunity annually, for example by the issuing of diplomatic immunity for UN vehicles, is in the millions and has been docked to States’ budgets to produce a degree of compliance; the international immunity similarly needs to be “read down ”.  Immunity is only justified where the UN provides a comparable internal legal standard.  The immunity may be most often justified where the local system of law has broken down.  However, immunity may only be justified when it offers comparable procedures and remedies, as they exist in the year 2004.  The system must be reformed to allow it to declare sexual harassment as a form of workplace bullying - there are a number of ways in which the UN workplace tribunals fall short of the norms those international standards of law lie down, three of which I will elaborate upon:

First, international law requires that judges be independent.  This concept dates back to the seventeenth century in England when judges were sacked by kings or sacked simply because the kings thought that the judges might rule against them.  The problem has been seen more recently in some countries such as Zimbabwe, where judges’ contracts are only renewed when their support of the governing regime is assured.  The abolition of short-term contracts within the ILOAT and UNAT and their replacement with contracts of between five to seven years with appointments made only once, so that the judges are not perceived to be dependent, would go some way towards remedying this problem.

Second, human rights law requires that hearings be open.  Article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone is entitled to a full and public hearing in protection of these rights and obligations. This is reflected in Article 5 of the ILOAT Statute – the presumption is that hearings be in public.  The majority of cases of the ILO Tribunal start with the phrase, “Having examined the written submissions and decided not to allow the complainant’s application for witnesses at a public hearing…”. 

The cases are simply decided on paper.  How can you decide on paper whether or not people are victims of harassment?  So often as a jurist, I find that a case can crumble when witnesses are put to the test; if there is medical evidence, it may be appropriate to hold the hearings in camera.  But there should be a presumption that hearings will be in public with witnesses.  An important feature of public hearings is that the information circulates through to staff - there is an educational function that tribunals have, to maintain standards in the work place.  A guarantee of hearings enabling the cross-examination of witnesses should be attended to by having a presumption in favor of public hearings, to ensure a reasoned decision.  It is unacceptable that the internal tribunals of the United Nations do not allow any public hearings.

Third, there is no court of appeal.  At the time when the Tribunal was created in 1946, this was standard practice, however experience has shown that it is important to have a court of review.  So far, the US detainees in Guantanamo, have been denied a process of appeal review.  Of course, an appeal mechanism is independent of the first tier review board.