UN Pay Should Be Based on Merit, Not Passport : Shared by Gloria Kodzwa

The recent humanitarian publication addressed the contentious issue of UN salary differences between national and international staff. It would appear that the issue of displacement of international staff is overlooked in the analysis…..much of the past arguments have been overlooked in this article. Sharing with my ex unicef colleagues as it further contributes to the discussion of UN reform.

Gloria

UN Pay Should Be Based on Merit, Not Passport

Shivonne Logan 

The New Humanitarian 19 March 2026 

Click here for the article 

Summary

The author, a Yale public policy graduate student, argues that the UN and INGOs must use the current wave of institutional reform — including the UN80 initiative — to dismantle colonial-era salary structures that systematically undervalue national staff. 

Drawing on her own experience in Amman, Logan describes a Jordanian colleague with superior qualifications who earned roughly half her remuneration package solely because she held the stronger passport. She traces the disparity to two foundational principles: the 1920 Noblemaire Principle, which sets international staff salaries against the highest civil service scale among member states, and the 1948 Flemming Principle, which benchmarks national staff pay against local market rates. 

The result is a two-tier system in which national staff bear the greatest physical risk — at least 330 humanitarian workers were killed in 2025, the vast majority of them national staff — while earning a fraction of their international counterparts' pay. 

Logan calls for unified salary scales by duty station rather than by passport, and points to Project Fair at the University of Edinburgh as an existing framework that organisations such as the Danish Refugee Council have already adopted. 

Quotes

  "It's no secret that national humanitarian staff face greater risk for lower pay: these inequities have been coded into the aid system." "The very systems adopted to ensure that the sector attracts talent disincentivises the best and brightest from pursuing humanitarian careers."