Application for Review of Judgment No. 333 of the United Nations Administrative Tribunal

This case concerns a refusal by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to renew the appointment of a staff member of the Secretariat beyond the date of expiry of his fixed-term contract, the reasons given being that the staff member had been seconded from a national administration, that his secondment had come to an end and that his contract with the United Nations was limited to the duration of the secondment. In a judgment delivered on 8 June 1984, the Administrative Tribunal rejected the staff member’s appeal against the Secretary-General’s refusal. The staff member in question applied for a review of the judgment to the Committee on Applications for Review of Administrative Tribunal Judgements, which requested the Court to give an advisory opinion on the merits of that decision. In its Advisory Opinion, rendered on 27 May 1987, the Court found that the Administrative Tribunal had not failed to exercise jurisdiction vested in it by not responding to the question whether a legal impediment existed to the further employment in the United Nations of the applicant after the expiry of his fixed-term contract, and that it did not err on any question of law relating to the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations. In that regard, the Court found that the Tribunal had established that there had been “reasonable consideration” of the applicant’s case, and by implication that the Secretary-General had not been under a misapprehension as to the effect of secondment, and that the provision of Article 101, paragraph 3, of the Charter must have been present in the mind of the Tribunal when it considered the question. In the view of the Court, those findings could not be disturbed on the ground of error on a question of law relating to the provisions of the Charter.