Welcome to the United Nations
Inputs of the United Nations System Staff College (UNSSC) to the United Nations High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) 2020:
“Accelerated action and transformative pathways: realizing the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development.”
Introduction
The United Nations System Staff College (UNSSC) has been committed to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals since their adoption, by focusing on the knowledge, skills and competencies needed within and beyond the United Nations system to support governments’ efforts to advance human well-being in an equitable and just manner, ensuring that no one is left behind, while the limits of the planet are respected.
In 2015, UNSSC responded to the requirements of the Agenda by creating a dedicated Knowledge Centre for Sustainable Development in Bonn, Germany. Additionally, all Staff College learning and training activities have been geared towards enabling the UN system and its partners to address the demands of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. UNSSC has also mainstreamed the UN System Leadership Framework into its learning offerings and is playing a lead role in fostering innovation across the system by managing the UN Innovation Toolkit under the leadership of its Knowledge Centre for Leadership and Management.
As a centre of excellence for learning and knowledge management within the UN system, the Staff College hosts a number of programmes ranging from leadership and management development to fostering the sectoral and functional competencies that are needed to effectively serve as an international civil servant. The College provides learning to increase the technical and substantive knowledge and skills spanning the three pillars of the UN: peace and security, human rights and development.
The UNSSC Strategic Plan 2018 – 2021 focuses the Staff College’s efforts to support the UN system in its expanding function as facilitator and broker of multi-stakeholder and crosssectoral efforts towards sustainable development at national, regional and global level. These efforts have opened access to a number of UNSSC learning offerings to participants from outside the UN system. Overall, the College offers learning initiatives that reach over 25,000 beneficiaries each year, with a majority of learning offerings delivered away from its campuses in Turin and Bonn.
The College’s work is fully in line with the 2020 Theme of the high-level political forum “Accelerated action and transformative pathways: realizing the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development.” In fact, the notion of transformative pathways has evolved over the first five years of implementation, underlining the need to move away from isolated sector-by-sector efforts and has culminated in the 2019 Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR), which stresses that “the true transformative potential of the 2030 Agenda can [only] be realised through a systemic approach that helps identify and manage trade-offs, while maximising co-benefits.”
