Occupational Health & Safety

“The United Nations, in fulfilling its organizational mandates, aim to provide a healthy, safe and respectful working environment that promotes greater accountability, efficiency and commitment of its workforce.” HLCM OSH Vision Statement, Bonn, 2019

The United Nations system routinely faces multiple and simultaneous crises across the globe. The High-Level Committee on Management is committed, with a sense of urgency and determination, to build on the experience of increasing tragic events to preserve the system’s ability to deliver on its programmatic mandates – the UN’s raison d'être – while, at the same time, ensuring that UN personnel remain physically and psychologically safe. 

The HLCM Occupational Health and Safety Forum is a UN-system wide forum established by HLCM at its 38th session in October 2019.

The Forum is chaired by WHO and composed of experts nominated by the HLCM members. It serves as a multidisciplinary UN-system wide technical body, and is intended to support agency heads fulfilling their duty of care for staff safety and well-being in a manner which evolves in parallel with the risks and the contexts in which their organizations work.

The Forum builds on the work conducted in the course of several years by the HLCM Cross-functional Task Force on Duty of Care.

• overview of HLCm occupational health and safety products (includes products by the Task Force and by the Forum)