Approved nearly twelve months ago at the 2024 UIAA General Assembly in Malta and officially published shortly after, the UIAA Declaration on Hiking, Climbing and Mountaineering has delivered on its promise of being a ‘living, breathing’ and global document.
The Declaration was published with a dual aim:
- To lay out the generally accepted norms for behaviour that the UIAA considers optimal. This includes the ethics and style with which we climb and the environmental and social considerations that we should be aware of.
- To clarify the best practice for climbers and mountaineers from a mountaineering viewpoint. This particularly refers to the style of rock climbs and ascents of “alpine” peaks.
Examples of the Declaration’s messages being used to support topical climbing and mountaineering debates can be seen in the recent UIAA statement on the Nepali government’s initiative to making more mountains free to climb and earlier this year regarding the UIAA’s position statement on the use of xenon gas in high-altitude mountaineering.
UIAA member associations have embraced the Declaration. The Alpine Club of Canada (ACC) was the first to print the Declaration and make both the paper and its poster version available in a cross section of its clubhouses. The Corean Alpine Club (CAC) was the first federation to translate the Declaration, followed by a version in French and as of October 2025, an Arabic translation courtesy of UIAA associate member Fujairah Adventures Centre (based in the United Arab Emirates).
Translations of the poster, essentially a short-form version of the Declaration depicting its nine norms, have been produced in an incredible 33 languages. These have been courtesy of a number of UIAA member associations as well as the UIAA Office.
“We are delighted with the feedback we have had on the Declaration and the input of many member federations who have helped translate it and make it available to their membership. We encourage members to make the poster visible in their facilities and to share the document’s many important messages. We will continue to use the Declaration’s guidelines as important references points when shaping UIAA policies, positions and procedures. Our next priority is producing case studies and best practices which highlight some of the Declaration’s norms.”
Greg Moseley, UIAA Mountaineering Commission President
Visit the Declaration website page for full details
Download the Declaration, in English, here.
