Global Values in International Organisations 409ployment by the UN. It is not that UN staff have not been exposed to
articulations about ethical conduct. It is not that staff are unaware of the
ethical conduct rules that their employers expect them to follow. The
silence that I have heard does not come from a vacuum.
Rather, that silence reflects the many, the varied and the inconsistent
values and virtues of international civil service.
32.2 A Cacophony over Individual Virtues
UN staff^317 can find the organizational values and individual virtues
that their institutions espouse in multiple documents. However, interna-
tional organizations are very imprecise when it comes to distinguishing
organizational values from individual virtues. Staff are exposed to the
UN Oath of Office, the Standards of Conduct for the International Civil
Service, Articles 97 through 101 of the UN Charter, the Regulations and
Rules adopted by the General Assembly (ST/SGB/2014/1), the Status,
317
Staff members—regularly appointed employees of international organiza-
tions who enjoy considerable civil service protections, benefits and emoluments
of employment—are not the only workers about whom we need to be concerned.
For many UN System agencies, consultants, contractual employees, or casual
workers perform much of the actual work. One of the consequences of rules-
based thinking is that these articulations of values and virtues only apply to staff
members. This leaves a large (and generally uncounted) work force whose con-
duct binds their employers and from whose labor their employers benefit, but
whose actions are beyond the operation of these key values and ethics-infused
standards. These workers rarely take the UN Oath of Office, receive ethics train-
ing, or are socialized on their jobs to consider the regulatory environment in
which they work. One can sense fiscal and budgetary expediency influencing the
kinds of labor deployed. Workers who are “other than staff” have fewer job
protections, more flexibility in when and how they work, and are largely forgot-
ten in discussions about virtues, values, and ethical behavior. Yet, when agency
budgets are restricted, when donations are dwindling, and unallocated financial
resources are scarce, it can be tempting to rely upon non-staff labor in order to
meet the exigencies of delivering mandated services. When we talk about the
values and virtues of international civil service, we must remember that these
expectations apply only to bona fide staff members; yet, the missions of interna-
tional organizations cannot be successfully delivered only through the labor of
staff members.