Staff Salaries in the UN Family

The salaries of international officials have again been under discussion in the General Assembly and, as the discussion is to continue during the twelfth session, this would seem to be an appropriate moment to review the situation. The eleventh Assembly had before it the report of a special committee requested to undertake “a comprehensive review of the United Nations salary, allowance and benefits system†. Although this report was praised in the debate, the Staff Council expressed the view that its “principal conclusions and recommendations are profoundly disappointing†. The committee, known as the Salary Review Committee (SRC), did not confine itself to salaries and allowances, but quite naturally dealt also with such questions as grading, recruitment and, to some extent, with pensions. Since Dr. R. N. Swift, in a recent article on personnel problems in this journal, has devoted sections to recruitment and salaries in the UN, I do not propose to consider recruitment policies, but to discuss the inter-related problems of salaries, grading and pensions in the wider setting of the whole UN family of international organizations.