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By late October, the Ethics Officer, who is also the ICMS coordinator, invited the SA and the different offices that are part of the ICMS system to a meeting to inform us that, on behalf of PAHO' s Director, he had been asked to undertake a review of the system's performance and to make recommendations for its restructuration if so required. This task should be completed by December 2009. The SA expressed its discomfort because a review of this magnitude requires evidence besides an in-depth discussion. to count with evidence. As of December, the review had not been completed and we are still discussing it.
The EC invited the LO’s to an Elluminate session to share in the discussion, unfortunately, their participation was minimal. The CE needs that all the LO’s really be aware of the implications that some changes could have for the personnel in terms of: Access to the internal justice system, conflict of interests, real impartiality and overall a transparency functioning.
The discussions regarding the restructuring of the Integrity and Conflict Management System in PAHO (ICMS), were carried out with special emphasis on the Board of Appeals and the Harassment Complaints Panel. The attached tables give details of the scheme for:
a) issues related to misconduct,
b) reconsideration of administrative decisions, and
c) issues of harassment in the working place.
The most important items of the discussions are detailed below,:
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Initially, the proposal considered the elimination of the Grievance Harassment Complaints Panel. The SA, the Secretary of the Grievance Harassment Panel, the Chairman of the Grievance Harassment Panel, and the Chairman of the Board of Appeals were opposed to this change and the Panel stays unchanged.continues in effect;
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A new formula for the review of administrative decisions called resolution petition might be in process. The SA finds this initiative positive because it allows for reconsideration;
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The pertinence or not of outsourcing the services of the chairman of the Board of Appeals was the subject of a long discussion. This means that a third party would be hired to act as chairman and also secretary of the Board, while the documents review would remain with the Panel formed, as it currently is, by elected officers of the staff and another group appointed by the PAHO Director. This hybrid was not convincing. The SA, the Secretary of the Grievance Harassment Panel, the President of the Grievance Harassment Panel and the President of the Board of Appeals opposed to this change. The ICMS did not reach consensus on this matter.
What we could observe from all these meetings is that most of the participants:
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are not in favor to having the system reviewed externally or at least with external collaboration. The SA proposed to invite an UN specialist who had worked extensively in the reform of the justice system. There was no receptivity to this proposal. The SA considers that a review of the system made only by the ICMS members is, in fact, a “power game”, that is, the entities with stronger internal power will advocate for their own model;
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a passive resistance to everything that may imply a process of peer review. The first initiative was trying to dismantle the panel that reviews harassment cases and, later, the initiative to outsource the role of the President of the BOA. We do not have any information or evidence on how many cases have been reviewed in the last five years, which what are the shortcomings in the review, or the average delay in reviewing any of the cases;
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concern in to control the processes;
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no disposition to discuss procedures or, specifically, to define TORs. We were told that there will be TORs for each component of the system, but the SA thinks that the best time to develop at least the basic outlines or to agree in guiding principles would be now;
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evidence has not been presented any evidence to justify outsourcing the role of President of the Board of Appeals. Everything is based on speculations on whether it actually works or not, or that the BOA president may have a conflict of interests. In our consultation with previous BOA presidents, they have said that they do not see the need for convenience of this change. One of the reasons is that it would make the process too legalistic.
We are really concerned that the method to monitoring of the system is not being addressed and that the very offices that have an important role in some stages of the conflict resolution should be are the ones that maintain preeminence in the system coordination, these offices are: the offices of Ethics, Human Resources and Legal Affairs.
We will continue reporting in the developments on this topic. |
