Employment of Associate Experts/Junior Professional Officers/Associate Professional Officers

(1) At its 62nd session (March 1985: ACC/1985/6, paras. 107-111), CCAQ reviewed certain issues which had arisen in connection with the conditions of service of staff employed for a fixed-term on the basis of a reimbursable agreement with donor governments, referred to by organizations variously as associate experts, junior professional officers or associate professional officers. At a meeting of organizations and national recruitment services in September 1984, an agreement had been reached on an interim arrangement for conditions of service of such personnel, which introduced a number of changes in relation to previous conditions. The Committee agreed to keep the matter under review (see also section 6.3).

(2) Following a meeting of its Field Working Group in November 1987, CCAQ cleared by correspondence a recommendation that prior service as a Junior Professional Officer/Associate Expert/Associate Professional Officer should be taken into account to determine eligibility for the enhanced assignment allowance (68th session, February-March 1988: ACC/1988/4, para. 108; see section 2.12).

(3) At its 72nd session (February-March 1990: ACC/1990/4, para. 44) CCAQ expressed the view that the mobility and hardship package approved for the Professional and higher categories should be fully applicable to Junior Professional Officers (JPOs)/Associate Professional Officers (APOs)/Associate Experts.

(4) At its seventeenth session (CEB/2009/HLCM/HR/27, para. 28), the HR Network took note of the recommendations 6 and 7 of JIU Report JIU/REP/2008/2.  Some organizations informed on their internal programmes to assist JPO’s; Commended UNDP on the Career Counselling Centre in Copenhagen which also provided assistance to JPOs from some other organizations; Encouraged other organizations to follow the UNDP initiative if they did not already have an internal programme; Decided not to establish a system-wide tracking and career counselling mechanism for current and former JPOs, given that this is a small percentage of the overall workforce; the resources required for such a mechanism would be inappropriately high, given the present global financial situation and agreed that it was not in a position to proceed with the JIU recommendations.

(5) At its eleventh session (CEB/2009/HLCM/FB/11, paras.53-55), the FB Network strongly confirmed the position already expressed by UNDESA, UNDP, and UNICEF at the 7th Meeting of National Recruitment Services and UN Organizations on the Associate Expert/JPO/APO Scheme held in Brussels in April 2009, i.e. that the PSC rate applied to the JPO Programme should remain at its current level of 12%.