UN Ethics Committee
Background and Mandate
The United Nations Ethics Committee was established in December 2007 with the adoption of the Secretary General's Bulletin ST/SGB/2007/11 entitled "United Nations system-wide application of ethics: separately administered organs and programmes" to help ensure coherent application of ethical standards within the United Nations.
The UN Ethics Committee is charged with developing a unified set of ethics standards and policies for the UN Secretariat and the separately administered funds and programmes, and to consult on important and complex cases and issues having United Nations-wide implications. Any Ethics Office or the Chairperson of the Ethics Committee can bring items to the attention of the Ethics Committee.
The Committee is chaired by the head of the Ethics Office of the UN Secretariat, who provides functional leadership in order to promote the development of capacity and to ensure adherence to consistent methodology in the delivery of ethics-related services.
The committee’s main priorities are to harmonize policies and practices among member organizations in the areas of financial disclosure, protection against retaliation, ethics training, ethics annual reporting, standard setting, benchmarking and peer support.
The Committee played the lead role in developing the draft system-wide Code of Ethics for United Nations personnel, as requested by the General Assembly in paragraph 161(d) of its resolution 60/1 on the 2005 World Summit Outcome and paragraph 16(a) of resolution 60/254.
The Committee meets on a regular basis.
To contact us, please call our Helpline: +1-917-367-9858 or email us: ethicsoffice@un.org.