World Accreditation Day 9 June 2021

The 2021 World Accreditation Day focuses on the theme of Accreditation supporting the sustainable development goals.

First celebrated in 2008, World Accreditation Day seeks to better spread the message of the value and benefits of accreditation and its associated activities such as certification.

Themes have included how accreditation delivers trust, confidence and global acceptance. Subjects have also explored how accreditation helps key groups such as those developing public policy and regulators.

More specific themes have shown how accreditation helps contribute to better health and social care, energy provision, food safety and world trade.

The last 18 months of the Covid-19 pandemic have seen consumers, businesses, governments and society as a whole demanding enhanced trust, confidence and acceptance of goods, services, people, processes and systems. World Accreditation Day helps broaden the understanding of how accreditation and conformity assessment services can meet these demands.

Linking the 2021 World Accreditation Day to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals  is a perfect connection. Accreditation and its associated activities provide so many different tools to support the SDGs. Just looking at one SDG, SDG 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth gives a glimpse of the support given to the SDGs by certification and standards alone.

Further examples with SDGs 3, 7, 10 and 13 are given here

In addition, the three IAF/ILAC videos below each delve further into accreditation supporting the SDGs, broken down into the themes of:

Meeting the needs of People: https://youtu.be/qqViC-qA6Ww

Protecting the Planet: https://youtu.be/J9N7Hn5tUV4

Building Prosperity: https://youtu.be/7lPF2pSV1Vk

Finally, more can be read in the joint statement from the Chairs of the International Accreditation Forum IAF and the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation/ILAC statement and the two organisations’ World Accreditation Day 2021 Brochure.

• World Accreditation Day