The Huffington Post reports that the United Nations Secretariat will not provide full benefits to same-sex employees regardless of the whether the employees home country recognizes such unions. While this is a step forward for equality, the article notes that the change only applies to the Secretariat organization and not the UN as a whole:
The change does not apply to all of the nearly 50 U.N. organizations, although some of them — such as UNESCO and the World Food Program — already had policies recognizing same-sex unions based on where the marriages took place. Ban’s announcement applies only to employees of the U.N. Secretariat, although it is likely that other agencies in the system will be pressured to follow suit.
[snip]
The change will also not apply to the independent U.N. pension fund and the pension, death and disability benefits that it manages. UN-GLOBE [the United Nations lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender and intersex employees group] and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission are calling on the fund to follow suit.
