FIFTH COMMITTEE TAKES UP REPORT OF INTERNATIONAL CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION

Press Release
GA/AB/3324

FIFTH COMMITTEE TAKES UP REPORT OF INTERNATIONAL CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION

The International Civil Service Commission should explore ways of establishing family-friendly human resources policies, the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) was told, as it began its consideration of the report of that Commission and several related notes from the Secretary-General, under its agenda item on the United Nations common system.

The continuing trend whereby young people were leaving United Nations employment remained a concern, the representative of Finland, speaking on behalf of the European Union and associated States, added. The United Nations must be able to attract the best staff, but it was just as important that people, once hired, remained motivated. Given that salary levels in the national public service used as a comparator to set United Nations salaries were increasing faster than those of the United Nations, it was important to look at how the system used to set United Nations salaries worked and how to increase its flexibility.

Introducing the Commission’s report, its Chairman, Mohsen Bel Hadj Amor, stressed that examining the cost-of-living factor applied to salaries of staff stationed in Geneva -- the Geneva post adjustment -- had almost become an annual exercise. Technical solutions to the problems were fraught with legal and administrative difficulties, so the Commission had recommended no change. He hoped that this year’s report would put to rest the General Assembly’s quest for further Commission action on this subject.

The Commission had recently devoted much time to reflection, discussion and brainstorming to guarantee its continuing effectiveness, he added. He hoped that if proposed reviews of its role and work took place, the Commission itself would play an integral part in them.

The representatives of Tunisia, Algeria, Latvia and Committee Chairman Penny Wensley of Australia also addressed the Committee.

The Committee will meet again at 10 a.m. tomorrow, when it will continue its general discussion of the common system and commence consideration of the Secretary- General’s report on the work of the Office of Internal Oversight Services.

Committee Work Programme

The Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) met this morning to take up matters relating to the report of the International Civil Service Commission (ICSC), under its agenda item on the United Nations common system.

[The International Civil Service Commission was established in 1974 to regulate and coordinate the conditions of service throughout the United Nations common system. The Commission makes recommendations to the General Assembly on principles for determining conditions of service in the common system, salary and post adjustment scales, dependency allowances and language incentives, education and repatriation grants and termination indemnities. All of the specialized agencies of the United Nations, except the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the International Finance Corporation, the International Development Association and the International Fund for Agricultural Development, have accepted and are bound by the statute of the Commission. The International Atomic Energy Agency is also a party to the statute.]

The Committee had before it the twenty-fifth annual report of the International Civil Service Commission for the year 1999 (document A/54/30). The report concludes that with respect to the issue of the Geneva post adjustment, the Commission has made a conscientious effort to respond to the repeated requests of the General Assembly regarding that matter. While technical solutions to resolve the Geneva post adjustment issue are feasible, the administrative and legal difficulties associated with them were beyond the Commission’s mandate. The Commission continued to believe that the existence of a national border in close proximity to the duty station makes Geneva a distinct situation which justifies the current post adjustment system; legal, administrative and technical difficulties militate strongly against change. In the current circumstances, the Commission concludes that there is no point in pursuing the matter further.

Regarding the post adjustment system as a whole, the Commission recommends periodic reviews and refinements of the post adjustment system. The post adjustment system should be allowed to function for a meaningful period of time so that any future review would take place on the basis of experience with its operation.

The report contains a number of decisions on the issue of conditions of service for Professional and higher categories. The Commission decided: to report to the General Assembly the margin forecast of 114.1 between the net remuneration of the United Nations staff in grades P-1 to D-2 in New York and that of the United States federal civil service in Washington, D.C., for the period 1 January to 31 December 1999; to inform the Assembly that again in 1999 the comparator had not fully implemented the Federal Employees’ Pay Comparability Act pay reforms; that its secretariat, the Chairman of the Consultative Committee on Administrative Questions and representatives of staff should discuss the imbalance in the margin levels with a view to formulating alternative proposals.

On the question of the base/floor salary scale, the Commission decided to recommend to the General Assembly, for implementation effective 1 March 2000: the revised procedure for determining the base/floor salary scale contained in an annex; the staff assessment scale for those receiving remuneration at the dependency rate shown in another annex; the base/floor salary scale in a third annex, reflecting the preceding two recommendations and consolidating 3.42 per cent of post adjustment on a no-loss/no-gain basis.

On the issue of preparations for the next round of cost-of-living surveys, the Commission approved the recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Post Adjustment Questions relating to the treatment of domestic service costs and the use of external data in Post Adjustment Index calculations. It also noted that a number of methodological issues must be addressed before embarking on the next round of cost- of-living surveys, and decided to place them on the agenda for the next session of the Post-Adjustment Advisory Committee, scheduled for early 2000. The Commission also decided not to pursue the issue of the separation of housing from post adjustment at small field duty stations.

The report reviews the basis for the dependent children’s allowance, and states that the social benefit approach for the payment of the children’s allowance should continue to be maintained, and that the floor formula should be reviewed to the extent possible in 2000, but not later than 2001.

After a report from the Working Group on the Framework for Human Resources Management, the Commission decided to request the Working Group to meet a final time to complete the work on the integrated framework for human resources management, including the drafting of guiding principles. It would present the complete framework to the General Assembly in 2000 -- a personnel year in the Fifth Committee of the General Assembly. The Commission also established a work programme in which the priority items for finalization by 2000 were ethics/standards of conduct and the pay and benefits system.

The Committee also had before it a statement by the Secretary-General on the administrative and financial implications of the decisions and recommendations contained in the report of the International Civil Service Commission (A/54/30) (document A/54/434).

The report points out that the twenty-fifth annual report of the ICSC will contain decisions and recommendations with financial implications for the regular budget for the biennium 2000-2001 related to the following issues: base/floor salary scale and staff assessment scale in the Professional and higher categories; a survey of best prevailing conditions of employment for the General Service and related categories in Paris.

The report says that the increased requirements under the regular budget resulting from the recommendations and decisions of the ICSC have been estimated to be in the order of $1.72 million net of staff assessment. The additional requirements for the regular budget in the biennium 2000-2001 will be reflected in the recosting of the programme budget proposals prior to determination of the appropriation to be adopted by the General Assembly.

The Committee also had before it a note by the Secretary-General on the review of the International Civil Service Commission (document A/54/483). The note contains the recommendations of the Secretary-General, in his capacity as Chairman of the Administrative Committee on Coordination (ACC), for the composition of a review group to look at the mandate, membership and functioning of the ICSC.

He proposes Agnes Y. Aggrey-Orleans, permanent representative of Ghana to the United Nations; Isabelle Bassong of Cameroon; former General Assembly President Imre Hollai; Enrique Iglesias of the Inter-American Development Bank; Ismat Kittani, former Assembly President; Alister McIntyre of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery; Jean-Bernard Merimee, permanent representative of France to the United Nations; Senator Laeticia Ramos Shahani of the Philippines; Ernst Sucharipa, the Director of the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna; Franklin Thomas of the United States; and Uyli Vorontsov of the Russian Federation.

By its terms of reference, the review group would assist the General Assembly to increase the effectiveness of the Commission in meeting the challenges facing the common system. Those terms would have it examine the various expectations and the objectives underlying the establishment of the Commission and the extent to which they have been met. It would look at proposals and initiatives by consultative partners to modify the Commission's functioning and working methods, the extent to which they have been implemented and the reasons why they succeeded or failed. It would consider similar national commissions to see how their practices might provide suitable reference, and any other options that could enhance the Commission's technical expertise.

The Group would invite submissions from Member States, executive heads of common system organizations and staff bodies, and would ultimately redefine what is required of the Commission and propose changes to it.

The Committee also had before it a note by the Secretary-General on the United Nations common system (document A/C.5/54/24), in which he, as Chairman of the ACC, recommends to the General Assembly an amendment to the statute of the ICSC. The amendment would allow the Commission and participating organizations to request advisory opinions from an ad hoc advisory panel composed of judges of the Administrative Tribunals of the United Nations and of the International Labour Organization (ILO). The text of the proposed amendment is annexed to the note.

On a number of occasions, the Secretary-General notes, the Administrative Tribunals have held that decisions of the Commission have illegally deprived staff of rights, and thus the implementation of those decisions was overturned. The ILO Administrative Tribunal has consistently stressed the responsibility of organizations’ executive heads to review such decisions before applying them. While executive heads are required to review decisions and recommendations of the Commission for their legality and not to apply them if they would deprive staff of their legal rights, there is no judicial forum in which an executive head can contest the legality of such decisions. Decisions of the Commission cannot be appealed by the executive head to an Administrative Tribunal, and there is no provision in the statutes of Administrative Tribunals for the provision of advisory opinions.

While staff can appeal to the Administrative Tribunals after decisions are applied, there is no scope for an authoritative statement of the law before the decision or recommendation is made, or implemented. The proposed amendment aims to address this.

Statements

The Chairman of the ICSC, MOHSEN BEL HADJ AMOR, said the ICSC had asked him to submit the complete framework on human resources management next year for two reasons: 2000 was a personnel year in the Committee, and this delivery date would provide the organizations with the time needed to consult their constituencies, including staff associations, on the suitability of the framework. Meanwhile, the ICSC was moving forward in individual areas of the framework, which the Commission would be reviewing at its spring session.

He stressed that an examination of the issue of the post adjustment in Geneva had become almost an annual exercise for the ICSC, and although the Commission had come up with a number of technical solutions, those were fraught with legal and administrative difficulties, and it was recommending that the status quo be maintained. He hoped that this year’s report would put to rest the Assembly’s quest for further action on this subject by the ICSC.

He said that next spring marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the ICSC. The Commission was conscious of its responsibilities as it entered the new millennium, and had been devoting more time than usual to reflection, discussion and brainstorming to guarantee its continuing effectiveness. He hoped that if General Assembly resolutions concerning possible reviews of the ICSC were effected, the Commission itself would be an integral part of the process. Meanwhile, the ICSC would continue to seek sound, practical solutions to matters falling under its mandate and would do so with a heightened awareness of the challenges that lay ahead.

KRISTINA TRONNINGSDAL (Finland), speaking on behalf of the European Union, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Cyprus, Malta and Norway, said the staff remained the most valuable and important asset of the Organization, and the United Nations common system remained a key instrument for ensuring the Organization attracted people of the highest quality. It also provided consistency in the conditions of employment throughout the system.

The United Nations must be able to attract the best staff, she said, but equally important was the level of motivation in the system. The trend whereby young people left the system remained a concern. The Noblemaire principle was a valuable tool for ensuring conditions remained competitive, but the Commission reported that salaries of the comparator were increasing faster than those of the United Nations. It was important to consider how the system worked, and to consider ways to increase its flexibility.

Cost-neutral ways of increasing family-friendly policies were also an important subject for consideration she added. The Union expected the Commission to consider how this might be developed in its report on the framework on human resources management. The Union accepted the Commission’s recommendation that it was not worth further pursuing the matter of the Geneva post adjustment. It also approved of the Commission’s recommendations on the base/floor scale methodology and staff assessment, although it sought clarification of the no-loss/no-gain principle.

United Nations staff had recently been killed in Burundi and Kosovo, she noted. It was absolutely vital that the utmost was done to protect all personnel and to ensure the privileges and immunities of staff. The Union called on all States to ratify the Convention on the safety of United Nations and associated personnel.

RADHIA ACHOURI (Tunisia) asked whether a note by the Secretary-General on the ICSC (document A/54/483) was going to be formally introduced to the Committee and if so by whom. She also wanted to know what procedure the Committee would follow to consider the document.

DJAMEL MOKTEFI (Algeria) pointed out that two other documents had not been formally presented, adding that a member of the Secretariat should come before the committee and answer questions. Algeria had some reservations about the mandate of the review body for the ICSC.

BAIBA PINNIS (Latvia) aligned her delegation with the statement made on behalf of the European Union by the representative of Finland.

Fifth Committee Chairman PENNY WENSLEY (Australia) said that she would seek advice prior to offering guidance on Member States’ questions.

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