Training has long been a core service of the UIAA and will remain central to its mission in the years ahead, as reaffirmed in the Strategic Priorities for 2025–2028.
Many UIAA member associations have benefited from the organisation’s training services as they establish national programmes and strengthen the qualifications of their future mountain leaders. In fact, access to these training opportunities is one of the key benefits that draws many federations to seek UIAA membership. In 2022, the former UIAA Training Panel was expanded into a full Commission, under the leadership of President Steve Long, who has been a key figure in the development of the UIAA’s training programmes since the early 2000s.
The importance of training to the UIAA was reinforced in 2024 when it was officially listed as one of the seven strategic priorities with the remit:
Building on its widely recognised training standards and certificates and the pool of knowledge and experience among its larger member federations, the UIAA will aim to promote more widely its standard programmes and supporting the efforts of member federations to develop their training structures according to their needs.
To ensure the UIAA delivers on this pledge, the UIAA Executive Committee (EC) and Management Board (MB), in consultation with the commission president, have decided that a review of its operational and administrative structure would ensure that future training programme development would be built on strong foundations. The first step in this approach has been the creation of a Working Group with the remit to implement such a review. This Working Group is made up of members of the UIAA EC, MB and UIAA office.
The Working Group has also decided that a temporary suspension of all UIAA training activities would provide the necessary space for the WG to conduct the review without operational pressures, prior to the Training Commission relaunch. This means that all programmes scheduled for delivery have been suspended and no new requests for programmes or accreditations will be considered in 2025. The UIAA has contacted all member federations impacted by this decision and will work to find an appropriate solution, with a view to a full resumption of activities once the Working Group has fulfilled its assignment.
Any inconvenience which may be caused to our member federations is of course deeply regretted.
The freezing of activities is deemed a necessary step in allowing the Working Group to run a full audit of training activities, to work with member associations and gain a closer appreciation of what they expect and would like from UIAA training services and to potentially make recommendations.
Such a suspension is not without precedent. In fact, as part of a broader initiative by the UIAA Management Board to streamline and strategically realign all Commissions with the Articles of Association, temporary pauses in activity have previously been applied to other UIAA projects. Two recent examples include:
- The dissolution of the Ice Climbing Commission in 2022 to allow a temporary UIAA Ice Climbing Governance Group to work on plans for the restructuring of the sport. The result of this was the creation of a self-governed World Ice Climbing Operating Unit in 2024 to restructure and oversee the running of the sport within the UIAA. The World Ice Climbing Operating Unit, in partnership with the UIAA Office and event organizers, delivered an impressive 2024-2025 UIAA Ice Climbing World Tour, the largest in a number of
- The cancellation of the 2024 UIAA Mountain Protection Award to allow the UIAA Mountain Protection Commission and Assessment Team time to audit and restructure the Award. In 2025, the Award was relaunched with a new sponsor and an outstanding number of applications. This would not have been possible under the previous model, nor if resources had continued to be allocated to running the award as usual.
For any specific questions please contact the UIAA Office.
