You can’t claim to be a values-based organization while discarding your own people in silence. And yet that is what too many international agencies do — cutting technical posts under the guise of restructuring, while retaining bloated management layers and generalist positions with no clear public value.

By Stephanie Hodge

When my post was abolished, there was no warning, no closure, no golden parachute—just a quiet erasure. Overnight, I went from a UN professional with decades of service to an invisible statistic in a system that eats its own.

I wasn’t just de-linked from my role—I was cut off from my health insurance, my professional identity, my community, and the safety net I thought I’d built after a lifetime of service.

What’s the real cost of that? Let me try to count it.

The Financial Toll

Over ten years, I’ve conservatively lost between $1.7 and $2.4 million USD — not in stock options or startup fantasies, but in the very basic elements of working life:

• Salary: Gone. A UN professional with my experience (at the P5/D1 level) typically earns around $120,000–$150,000 a year. That’s over $1.2 million in wages lost—and that’s before accounting for inflation.
• Pension: For every year you’re out of the UN system, your pension erodes. I’ve lost another $300,000+ in employer and personal contributions to retirement.
• Health Insurance: When you lose your job, you lose your healthcare. For ten years, I’ve covered out-of-pocket care for my dependent—including during health emergencies. I’ve spent $50,000–$200,000 USD just trying to keep her well and safe.
• Missed Opportunities: I should have been leading evaluations, directing global programs, mentoring the next generation. Instead, I was just trying to survive. Lost networks, lost credibility, lost consulting income. Easily another $200,000–$400,000 in forgone earnings.

The Emotional Toll

The numbers don’t tell the whole story. They don’t reflect what it’s like to wake up every morning wondering if your work ever mattered. They don’t show the moments I had to choose between groceries and another round of lab tests for my mother. They don’t capture the professional shame, the panic, the quiet disbelief that no one came looking.

It’s not just a system failure. It’s a human one.

Why Reform Can’t Wait

You can’t claim to be a values-based organization while discarding your own people in silence. And yet that is what too many international agencies do — cutting technical posts under the guise of restructuring, while retaining bloated management layers and generalist positions with no clear public value.

We need a reset. Here’s where to start:

1. Guarantee Transitional Support for Abolished Posts

Abolition should never mean abandonment. Staff whose posts are cut must be offered:

• Transitional pay and benefits (healthcare continuation, pension bridging)
• Career re-entry guarantees within a defined period
• Support for relocation, re-skilling, and reference protections

2. Protect Technical Expertise

Organizations must stop privileging coordination over content. The future depends on knowledge—gender, climate, health, evaluation, biodiversity, education. We need fewer PowerPoint czars and more people who’ve actually done the work.

Create:

• Technical career tracks with promotion potential
• Fixed-term roles with mobility protections for those in niche or field-based posts
• Internal pools for technical surge deployment

3. Build Accountability into Human Resource Systems

Too often, posts are abolished due to politics, personal vendettas, or vague restructurings. There must be:

• Transparent criteria for abolishment
• Independent review panels for contested decisions
• Data tracking on who is let go and why—disaggregated by gender, nationality, race, and contract type

4. Rebalance Power and Purpose

The system is top-heavy and risk-averse. It’s time to rebalance:

• Elevate field voices, not just headquarters control
• Fund delivery and results—not endless strategy papers
• Measure success by impact, not institutional expansion

Rebuilding, Not Returning

I’ve spent the last decade slowly rebuilding. Consulting, evaluating, speaking truth to power. I’ve advised governments, walked the garbage-strewn backstreets of Jakarta, listened to stories from herders in Mali and coral farmers in Seychelles. My skills didn’t vanish. My value didn’t die.

But I’ve had to fight for every contract. Every inch of ground.

And I’ve come to understand this: abolition doesn’t end a career—it reveals what the system never saw in the first place.

To Those Who’ve Been Abolished

If you’ve lost your job, your anchor, your sense of place—this is for you. You are not expendable. You are not a line in a budget or a casualty of “restructuring.”

You are the system’s conscience, even if it forgot your name.

We are still here. We are still needed.

And we are not done.

Stephanie Hodge is an international evaluator and former UN advisor who has worked across 140 countries. She writes on governance, multilateral reform, and climate equity.

This piece has been sourced from Inter Press Service.