On 7 December 2023, the UN Joint Staff Pension Fund will turn 75. For the first time, a comprehensive history of the Fund is being published to highlight decades of service to participants, retirees and beneficiaries and sustainable investment. You can download and read the publication here.

Over the course of its 75-year history, the Fund has successfully overcome volatile markets, fluctuating currencies and difficult technological change. It has been providing peace of mind to international civil servants as they go about their mission to make the world a better place.

The Fund’s resilience

The Fund is built to last, and this is testament to the dedicated people who have worked for it over the years to ensure its core missions of processing and paying pensions, to modernize its services to clients and to safeguard and grow its investments despite the numerous economic and social challenges.

Good governance

Strong governance, underpinned by robust decision-making, has helped the Fund to grow and thrive. The Pension Board has checked its solvency through regular actuarial valuations, updated regulations and rules and supervised the administration of pensions, in agreement with member organizations and the UN General Assembly. The Fund’s investments have remained safe, profitable, convertible and liquid as per the Fund’s investment policy.

The Fund’s global reach

As a global fund, the Fund pays pensions in more than 190 countries and in 18 currencies. It has investments in more than 100 countries and 27 currencies and in different asset classes. This protects the Fund from changes in the market and the economy and improving its returns over the long-term.

A leader in responsible investing

From the start, the Fund has prohibited investments in arms and tobacco companies. More recently, it divested USD 2 billion from the heaviest polluters in fossil fuels. It’s leading the way for climate action investment, having already reduced the financed emissions of its global equity, corporate bond, and private real estate portfolios by 39 per cent, ahead of target, using indexes, data, and analytical tools to identify companies in every industry that are taking concrete steps to reduce their emissions.