This chapter begins by introducing remuneration – as a term encompassing both compensation corresponding to the work an international official performs and benefits addressing their personal circumstances – as integral to the treaty-based obligation upon international organizations to secure staff possessing the highest standards of efficiency and technical competence, with due regard to recruitment on as wide a geographical basis as possible. Second, the legal principles of remuneration are identified, namely: (1) Compensation must secure staff of the highest standard; and (2) Pay must be equal for equivalent work. Third, two attendant legal duties of remuneration are considered, namely: (1) Benefits must ensure geographic diversity; and (2) Remuneration revision methodology must be objective. Fourth, the practice of tax reimbursement is examined. Fifth, and in conclusion, this employment law of remuneration at international organizations is restated.

What is the employment law at international organizations? The answer – international administrative law – implements treaty-based employment at all international organizations, including the United Nations, International Labour Organization and the World Bank. It governs an encounter between the status of the international civil service, administrative authority at international organizations and the jurisprudence of international administrative tribunals. For the first time, the universal legal basis of international administrative law is concisely and clearly introduced, tracking the employee lifecycle, from selection, through remuneration, performance management and integrity to ending service. Drawing on the judgments of multiple administrative tribunals, a clear and useable interpretative framework of interconnected legal principles and legal duties is established. Intended for all staff at international organizations, Member State representatives, legal practitioners and scholars, this book serves as the basis for a shared understanding of international administrative law, equal to the enormity of the endeavours entrusted to the international civil service.

Chapter 6 traverses a test veteran group action against the British Ministry of Defence as it moved through the High Court of England and Wales, the Court of Appeal, to a final ruling in the UK Supreme Court. According to the legal principle of limitation, test veterans needed to offer the courts life histories proving ignorance of nuclear risk. The MoD’s legal counsel argued that an individual’s obligations to anticipate and understand injury were unrelated to the pragmatic enactment of such knowledge. In witness stands, test veterans recontextualized their knowledge of injury in ways that animated state, medical, and legal actors as powerfully capable of stymying their knowledge. In this case, claimants experience a series of unjust legal reversals and ironies. First, the actions and duties of claimants, not those accused of injuring them, became the subject of moral and legal judgement. Second, claimants’ long-running quests for knowledge about their health became the very legal rationale to deny them justice. And third, such legal processes imposed strict time limits on claimants’ actions, while also making claimants wait as appeals stretched over years.

Chapter 5 dwells on the legal reasoning that governed New Zealand military disablement pensions. It charts how test veterans experienced law as an arbitrary logic, one that remained simultaneously open and closed to them. Law, many felt, was a force capable of dividing their community according to the vicissitudes of luck. This chapter also engages with the labour of Pension Appeal Board members who tried to fit veteran accounts of injury within legislative notions of reasonable evidence and plausible causation. Sitting face to face in appeal board meetings, veterans and those adjudicating their claims attempted to embody the state’s legal and moral responsibilities to offer benevolent and exceptional military entitlements to veterans. Test veterans reveal how thresholds of proof and exposure become negotiable and unstable objects of law and medicine that shift dynamically throughout the proof-making process. As this chapter shows, flexible and informal proof-making systems that aim to overcome unfair evidentiary burdens of exposure can, for claimants, ultimately reinscribe a sense of injustice and harm due to their seemingly arbitrary, opaque, and inconsistent judgements.

This chapter begins by outlining the past trends and the present trajectory of employment-related dispute resolution at international organizations. Second, the historic evolution of the statutory basis of administrative tribunals at the United Nations is analysed, suggesting that Member State governance organs are prepared to revise procedures, but are reluctant to address the transparency of employment law at international organizations. Third, and in conclusion – extending this book’s emphasis on concisely and clearly introducing the law – the incorporation of general legal principles of international administrative law into the Statutes of international administrative tribunals is proposed.

This chapter begins by introducing misconduct – as the enforcement of standards of conduct at international organizations – comprising a series of actions intended to dependably investigate, attribute responsibility and consequently sanction integrity breaches by international officials. Second, the legal principles of misconduct are identified, namely: (1) The facts of misconduct must be established; (2) The established facts must legally constitute misconduct; and (3) Disciplinary sanction must possess a legal basis. Third, three attendant legal duties of misconduct are considered, as follows: (1) Proof of misconduct must be compelling; (2) Alleged misconduct must afford an opportunity to respond; and (3) Misconduct may only be sanctioned proportionately. Fourth, the chapter considers obligations towards staff who allege that they have been subjected to interpersonal misconduct – notably sexual harassment and bullying – and their capability to challenge and obtain information concerning related administrative decisions. Fifth, and in conclusion, this employment law of misconduct at international organizations is restated. The standards of conduct implementing the treaty-attributed integrity and independence of the international civil service are the subject of Chapter 9, ‘Standards of Conduct’.