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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 February 2017
In September 1984, the UN Secretary-General (Respondent) offered five-year fixed-term contracts as interpreters to Rong Qiu, Kefu Zhou, and Jiping Yao (Applicants), who had just completed the UN training course for interpreters at the Beijing Institute of Foreign Languages. The letters of appointment accepted by the Applicants stated that they were “on secondment from the Government of China.” They received very good performance ratings, and in the spring of 1989 their department recommended that they be offered probationary, career-track appointments when their contracts expired.
1 Employees “seconded” to the United Nations are assigned by their government to serve in the United Nations for a specified period under defined terms and conditions, on the understanding that the employees have the right to revert to employment in their government at the end of the period of secondment. Higgins v. Secretary-General of the United Nations, Judgement No. 92, UN Doc. AT/DEC/92, para. IV (1964).
2 Judgement No. 482, para. XXIV (quoting Levcik v. Secretary-General of the United Nations, Judgement No. 192, UN Doc. AT/DEC/192, para. V (1974)).
3 Id., para. XXIII (quoting Levcik, supra note 2, para. V).
4 Id., para. VIII.
5 The reasons were (1) the importance of ensuring that representatives of the Chinese Government, the primary users of the Chinese language services, are confident that their statements will be objectively interpreted; (2) the impossibility of running an efficient program “in a situation where staff members were antagonistic to each other because of expressly stated political animosities”; and (3) the possible adverse effect that disrupting the regular rotation of the Chinese language services staff back to China might have on the UN language-training program at the Beijing Institute, the only current UN source of Chinese language services staff.
6 The Applicants received career appointments. Report of the Secretary-General to the Fifth Committee, UN Doc. A/C.5/45/12, para. II (1990).
7 A notation on the letter of appointment is the typical way the United Nations indicates the employee is on secondment. The United Nations only uses more detailed agreements in its secondments to other organizations. Id., paras. 4, 8.
8 Id., para. 14.
9 Id., para. 12.
10 Yakimetz v. Secretary-General of the United Nations, Judgement No. 333, UN Doc. AT/DEC/333 (1984).
11 The International Court of Justice reviewed the decision in Application for Review of Judgement No. 333 of the United Nations Administrative Tribunal, 1987 ICJ Rep. 18 (Advisory Opinion of May 27), and, in a poorly reasoned opinion, found that the Tribunal had not erred in interpreting the UN Charter.
12 For another view of the likely impact of Judgment No. 482 and the import of the Secretary-General’s report to the Fifth Committee, see Meron, “Exclusive Preserves” and the New Soviet Policy toward the UN Secretariat, 85 AJIL 322, 328–29 (1991).
13 Statement of V. M. Nikiforov, UN Doc. A/C.5/45/SR.15 (1990). On this, see Meron, supra note 12, at 324.