VOL. 67, NO. 3 - AAFI-AFICS, Geneva - UNOG

I have been a vice-president of the AAFI-AFICS Committee, in charge of pensions, after having joined it in
2001, first as representative of my GATT/WTO association and after as an elected member. I have always
been clear on the motives of my participation in AAFI-AFICS and in FAFICS as well. My exclusive concern
has been the defence of the interests of all retirees. For a number of years, I believed that our action in
AAFI-AFICS, in FAFICS and, through these channels, in the Pension Board, could be fruitful. Events have
not confirmed my hopes and I am now convinced that the present institutional structure of FAFICS, with its
observer status in the Pension Board, will never be effective. As long as that status has not been improved,
the retirees will always be acted upon, not actors. Full deliberative voice for the representatives of the
retirees in the Board is the only condition for an effective representation. I have given expression to my ideas
under various forms and in various circumstances. For instance, in 2005 at the Council of the Federation, I
suggested that the solution to our ineffectiveness was the creation of a Retirees' Pension Committee, fully
recognised by the Board, like those Pension Committees of the UN and its Agencies. This suggestion faced
blunt scepticism. When the Board decided and the General Assembly of the UN approved in 2006 that the
retirees would elect their representatives in the Board, I strongly supported the idea, suggesting that these
elected representatives would have to rely, in the fulfilment of their mandate, on the only existing structure,
i.e. the associations of retirees and their Federation. It was clear to me that the election was a decisive step
to full deliberative status of our representatives. This, however, in the minds of the Officers of the Federation
(they were seven, with three of them from AAFI-AFICS), would have undermined the position of FAFICS, a
paramount consideration which led them to share the negative views of the representatives of the
participants, who said that the retirees did not need to be represented in that way, and of the Secretariat of
the Fund, who considered that the election was a costly process. After such a setback, we should now
concentrate on a simple position of principle, that is to request in the most straightforward and strong terms
that the representatives of the retirees, whoever they may be, should be given the right to vote in the
Pension Board, on equal footing with the other representatives seating in that body. For that, I never found
enough support in the Committee, except for my last proposal of linking the Council of the Federation
together with the elected representatives within the framework of a kind of association officially recognised
by the Board in its Regulations. The proposal, supported by the Committee, was obviously too much for the
dignitaries of the Federation and never reached the stage of discussion in the Council of the Federation that
followed, the principle of the election of representatives of the retirees having been abandoned in the
meantime with the consent of the Federation.
The road was blocked, but in the part of the annual report of the Committee dealing with pensions, I had
been appealing to a strong and resolute action by our Association with the aim of bringing the Federation to
demand improvement of its status from observer to full member. Apparently, nobody cared to understand
what it meant and my colleagues were surprised when I explicated my views before our General Assembly. I
suspect that their anger, which led to my summary execution by the Committee in a nearly Stalinist fashion,
was due not so much to the fact that I took the liberty to address frankly the General Assembly, but mainly to
the fact that I won its applause and support.
Just a few last comments to come back to the introductory words of the public notice announcing my
dismissal as one of these "forthright actions required to resolve conflicts". It remains that my proposal,
shocking as it was for the Committee, has been supported by the General Assembly, in other words by the
impersonation of the Association. May be I am mistaken, but I believe that loyalty to the Association and its
members takes precedence to solidarity with a Committee which is neglecting and sometimes betraying the
interests of the ordinary members. In view of what happened in the General Assembly, the only forthright
action which would make sense would be to organise a consultation of the membership by referendum and
decide whether or not gaining deliberative status for the representatives of the retirees in the Pension Board
should be the primary objective of the Association and the Federation, to be pursued with utmost
determination. A positive vote would significantly strengthen the position of those who would be mandated to
convey our demands to the Pension Board and the UN General Assembly.
But, one might object, the Chairman of our Committee, realising what was the wish of the Assembly, publicly
undertook personally to submit this proposal to the Federation. Coming from one of the Officers of the
Federation who sent to the bottom the election of our representatives, that is, to say the least, surprising.
8th May 2008
Jean Hanus
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