The UN have extended their parental leave policy to give all parents 16 weeks paid leave — regardless of gender. Birth mothers can now access an additional 10 weeks paid leave, extending their parental paid leave to 26 weeks, though leave must be taken within 12 months of becoming a parent.
The policies also cover parents adopting a child, and cover staff anywhere in the world, since the UN is exempted from local labour laws.
The International Civil Service Commission — the body that regulates UN staff employment conditions, made changes to the policy last month — a decision Ian Richards, an Economist in Digital Government and Investment Facilitation at the UN has been lobbying for since 2017.
“Six years ago I was among those who started mobilising for new UN parental leave rules that would recognise WHO recommendations for six months exclusive breastfeeding, enable a more equal workload between parents and eliminate the professional sidelining of birth-age women and better reflect the diversity of who parents are and how they got there,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
“Others took over the relay baton and I am pleased that as of 2023 a new UN parental leave policy is in place…Thank you to everyone who contributed to this change.”
In an interview with Human Resources Online, Richards said he was “delighted by the change in policy, which has taken a lot of work with many colleagues.”
“We were worried that cost considerations would block it at the final hurdle but we are glad that the General Assembly eventually decided to prioritise employee welfare,” he said.
Mark Polane, president of the UN Field Staff Union and the UN International Civil Servants’ Federation (ICSC) called the latest changes “significant”.
“A number of UN organisations already had better parental leave arrangements in place for their staff,” he said. “However, many of those were based on “creative” solutions using existing other leave entitlements that would be “bolted on” to the standard maternity/paternity leave.”
Organisations including the UN will have to work on “being more progressive on the one hand and being in compliance with the ICSC framework,” he added.
The latest changes mean that parental leave at the UN now exceeds that given to staff at the IMF, who currently offer 12 weeks to birth mothers, and eight weeks for fathers and adoptive parents.
At the World Food Programme, birth mothers can access 24 weeks of paid leave, while staff at UN. Women have up to 32 weeks maternity leave entitlements for those located in hardship duty stations.
According to Polane, the UN Secretariat is still working out how to implement the new parental leave policy, especially for those parents who became parents in 2022 and can access the leave retroactively.
“The UN Secretary General in a recent town hall meeting with all staff indicated that he is still considering this issue, mostly since the General Assembly had indicated that the implementation needed to be carried out from within existing resources,” Polane said.
“For now, we are all waiting for the Secretary General to make a decision.”
Debate over definition of “birthing mother/parent”
The term “birthing mother/parent” remains open to interpretation.
At a World Health Organization (WHO) meeting of the executive board recently, member states were tasked with adopting a draft resolution changing WHO staff rules and regulations.
According to Jaimie Guerra, an external relations officer for WHO in Geneva, WHO’s initial proposal to use “birthing mother/parent” was not included in the UN’s latest parental leave decision, but rather an attempt by WHO to “be inclusive of all staff members in its policy making.”
“Birthing mother/parent” is understood to include all types of parents, including transgender and surrogate parents.
Countries including Russia and Ethiopia believe the WHO should retain the term “birth mother” in the parental leave policy, while countries such as the US want to change the term to “birthing mother/parent.”
The board has, for now, stuck to “birth mother”, though agreed to revisit the debate in the future “as necessary.
Alexander Pchelyakov, a spokesperson for the Russian diplomatic mission to UN institutions in Geneva, said that the term should be “birth mother” — the term used in the ICSC decision.
The draft administrative instruction for the new policies is still being finalised by the UN Office of Human Resources.