Elections for UN Participant Representatives to the Pension Board will take place in June according to a four-year election cycle. As with everything related to the UN Pension Fund, it’s heavily politicized.
These are crucial elections. The UN Participant Representatives (four members and two alternates; one retired some time ago) have done their work of representing 85,000 UN staff in the common system (active staff) while advocating for the interests of UN retirees who have been failed by our purported and self-interested representatives, FAFICS (the Federation of Associations of Former International Civil Servants).
Three current candidates for election, Ian Richards (UN Geneva), Ibrahima Faye (UNJSPF), and Mary Abu-Rakabeh (UNICEF) are incumbent UN Participant Representatives running for re-election.
All Fund members -- active UN staff and retirees --owe a debt of gratitude to the UN Participant Representatives and to Aissatou Ndiaye and Michelle Rockcliffe who are not running for re-election.
For the past four years, this group of UN Participant Representatives has fought courageously and effectively against strong and determined opposition from other board members, to bring transparency, integrity and improved management to both sides of our Fund – benefits and investments.
Not surprisingly, elements of the Fund management and Board leadership who labored unsuccessfully to deny two of them seats on the Board after the last election, and have consistently worked to intimidate and muzzle them, are working behind the scenes to rig the elections, including by trying to deny eligibility to Fund staff, a move that was thwarted by a recent decision of the polling officers..
http://unpension.blogspot.com/2021/06/un-pension-fund-polling-officers.html.
It’s important that active staff, in voting for their representatives on the UN Staff Pension Committee, keep their sights on the politics motivating the flurry of candidates, including the current UN Staff Union president, pushing to place themselves ahead of the slate that includes these experienced, trustworthy and committed incumbents.
There’s a lot at stake, as evidenced by a glaring break with tradition, a sign of its determination to influence the election for its own self-interest, in which the UN administration is reportedly paying for the election, which has normally been funded by the UN Staff Unions.
Members of the New York Staff Union leadership, in solidarity with UN management, have also labored long and hard to oppose the current UN Participant Representatives, including last year denying them access to the Staff Union Broadcast system to report to their constituents on Fund activities.
Now a slate of incumbents including the outgoing president of the New York Staff Union, who recently led a successful effort to remove the New York Staff Union from the umbrella of CCISUA to UNISERV, is being touted as the pension champion of field staff, in a brazen move to pit one group of staff against another and in a bid to wield power in an area where she has zero experience.
There’s much at stake in this election to a body that has oversight of the life savings of the some 212,000 members of the fund, both active staff and retirees. The gains in transparency and efficiency in the operations of our Fund, largely due to the efforts to the UN Participant Representatives, serial audits by the UN internal oversight office (OIOS), and resulting General Assembly reforms, must be built on, solidified and increased, not reversed!
It’s critical that Fund members who are eligible to vote, active UN staff, not confuse raw ambition and self-interest with knowledge, integrity, and experience.
Vote for the slate of Ian, Ian, Mary, Ibrahima, Abolade, Egor and Solomon. They’ll work for ALL our interests!
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