The following article provides an update to a “Guest Opinion” piece that I contributed to the January–February 2006 issue of this magazine. It is also my addition to the series of articles published under the heading “Gay Rights in the Age of Obama” in the March–April 2010 issue.
THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION has been under intense scrutiny by glbt activists wondering whether it has lived up to its commitments on the issues that matter to our community. This scrutiny is, of course, warranted and necessary. It is not by being deferential or quiet that civil and human rights are advanced.
On the basis of my experience as an international civil servant—I am an American who has been employed at the United Nations for twenty years—I would give the Obama Administration fairly high marks for having taken decisive steps to enable same-gender partnerships at the UN to have their relationships recognized and to receive the benefits of other committed couples. The steps to which I refer are perhaps a bit too administratively arcane in nature—related to benefits and entitlements of UN employment—to have made the headlines in the gay press. But they represent an important milestone in the recognition of glbt rights by an international body.
Employment at the UN comes with a range of benefits and entitlements beyond base salary. Many of those benefits and entitlements flow on the basis of recognized family status, historically resulting in significantly prejudicial treatment with respect to gay and lesbian employees who are in committed, same-gender relationships.
For the first sixty years of the UN, a heterosexual employee could meet someone of the opposite gender in a bar tonight, marry her or him tomorrow, on the third day adopt a child or children, and on the fourth day enjoy a huge increase in benefits and entitlements in the form of dependency allowances, education grants, additional allotments for shipping personal effects to a posting in a new country, etc. This person could also, in such instances, rely on the UN to apply its good offices to seek residence and work permits for the newly acquired family—and provide them access to the same health insurance and pension benefits to which others are entitled.
By contrast, for the first sixty years of the UN, as a homosexual employee one could live in a committed same-gender relationship for forty years of employment and over that time assume full financial and other duties with respect to not only one’s life partner, but also his or her own biological children. Because such a family construct was not recognized by the UN, the employee would not have received one additional dollar of family-related benefits or entitlements. Furthermore, the life partner and children would probably not have been able to join the employee on his or her career-mandated moves around the world, and they would have been denied access to the attractive UN health insurance scheme and survivors’ pension benefits.
All that began to change during Kofi Annan’s second term as Secretary General. At a time when he no longer needed to seek favor with the George W. Bush Administration—it would have been unprecedented for Annan to run for a third term—he and his right-minded, clear-thinking Head of Administration, (Republican) Catherine Bertini, agreed to activists’ request “do the right thing,” and overturn the longstanding inequity—or part of it.
Activists had originally proposed, through a variety of internal administrative mechanisms, both official and unofficial, that Annan establish a system for recognizing same-gender relationships of employees on the basis of a neutral set of criteria, applied without distinction to all applicants, including an affidavit confirming the relationship (and a subsequent affidavit in the event of dissolution of the relationship).
Annan declined to go this far in the face of ardent and vitriolic opposition from the Vatican and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Opting for a politically more expedient route, he established a system of recognition based on deference to an employee’s country of origin. Initially, he proposed to recognize same-gender relationships of employees only on the basis of same-gender marriage endorsed by that country. After a bit of cajoling, however, he capitulated by agreeing to include domestic partnerships, which brought in a larger number of countries.
So, as of 2004, gay and lesbian UN employees from countries such as Canada and France were treated as equal to their heterosexual counterparts working at the UN. On the other hand, employees from, say, Iran and Zimbabwe—and the vast majority of the more than 190 member states of the UN—continued to suffer prejudicial treatment. This included gay and lesbian UN employees from the U.S. Until very recently, U.S. officials ignobly refused to endorse recognition of the same-gender marriages or domestic partnerships of US citizens employed at the UN under the policy introduced by Annan, causing these workers to suffer significantly reduced benefits and entitlements. It is worth noting that the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (doma) was used to justify this position.
Early in the new Obama Administration, activists and members of Congress—the latter led by Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin—approached the appropriate U.S. officials and urged that this intransigence be reversed. Members of Congress proposed, in a groundbreaking letter of August 6, 2009, addressed to Ambassador Rice, copied to Secretary of State Clinton, and signed by an impressive 33 members of Congress, that the U.S. Mission “ensure the fair and equitable treatment of all U.S. citizens who serve honorably as UN employees.” After the dark years of the Bush Administration, the best they were hoping for was an approach that allowed the U.S. to catch up to UN members such as Canada and France. But the Administration went further, setting the stage for significant expansion of internal UN policy to the benefit of gays and lesbians from countries around the world.
Activists approaching the new Obama Administration pointed out, taking a step back, that the Annan/Bertini policy from 2004 shifted human resources management from the UN as employer to the various UN member states—and argued that this burden should be shifted back to the UN as soon as possible. The far preferable means for determining whether gay or lesbian employees should be entitled to recognition of their partnerships, it was underscored, would be for the UN to use a simple affidavit and neutral set of criteria—such as is well-established practice, for example, at the World Bank (model #1); and as agreed upon at a seminal 1998 meeting of a now superseded internal UN governance mechanism called the CCAQ (Consultative Committee on Administrative Questions: model #2).
On March 1, 2010, the U.S. Mission to the UN changed everything for gay and lesbian Americans working at the UN. It issued instructions to the UN to administer automatic recognition of the same-gender relationships of American employees of the UN on the basis of neutral criteria, supporting a signed affidavit. There was no reference to U.S. legislative posturing on the validity of these relationships or ongoing battles in the courts. In taking this approach, the U.S. provided model #3 for gay and lesbian employees from countries such as Iran and Zimbabwe, whose hopes of gaining recognition under current UN policy, entailing deference to country of origin, are remote at best.
Employees from countries such as Canada and France, whose missions are required to adjudicate each individual case of request for recognition, are already suggesting that their missions take the administratively more expedient U.S. approach. Additional UN employees can be expected to seek recognition for their same-gender relationships through the use of the internal UN administrative appeals system. It’s a cumbersome and painfully slow process, but it has been navigated successfully in the past by glbt activists at the UN. A series of successful appeals was largely responsible for eliciting the 2004 advances from Kofi Annan.
What will be their primary argument? Reference to the most fundamental tenet of human resources management within international organizations: all employees need to be treated equally, irrespective of country of origin. Yes, there are culturally and historically rooted differences in countries around the world. But if a woman from a country which bars her from working in a mixed-gender workplace applies to the UN for a job, the UN does not defer to the policies of her home country. As an employer, the UN has a duty to set a higher standard and not discriminate on the basis of country of origin. By citing this argument, referencing the above three models, and undertaking other necessary groundwork, chances are good that future appellants from countries such as Iran and Zimbabwe will be successful, and the system of neutral criteria will be extended to all UN employees, irrespective of country of origin. (Note that the UN policy discussed above applies only internally, to the 60,000 or so UN employees around the world.)
Before a month had expired after the policy change of March 1, 2010, numerous Americans working in countries around the world had begun to benefit, gaining access to the attractive UN health insurance scheme for critically ill same-gender partners/spouses. The U.S. can be proud that under the March 1, 2010. issuance from the Obama Administration it has led the way to improving the chances for gay and lesbian employees from more glbt-oppressive countries to receive recognition for their relationships.
Author’s Note: I have shepherded the above processes internally at the UN for more than a decade, at various times representing the Federation of International Civil Servants’ Associations (ficsa), the UN Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Employees group (UN globe), and individual appellants. Two experiences helped to motivate my determination to see this effort through. Early in my UN career, my partner was killed in the employ of the UN, and I had no official standing in the aftermath to do things such as obtain copies of reports describing the circumstances surrounding his death (but eventually I prevailed through personal connections). Then, midway through my career, I was fired for being gay by a rabidly homophobic boss, and was prompted to launch an appeal via channels leading up to the International Labor Organization. The appeal was fully successful.
Update: Iglhrc was recently awarded official consultative status at the UN, the first U.S.-based glbt group to be so recognized, prompting President Obama to issue a public statement of congratulations.
