In 2018 – upon a proposal from Accredia with the involvement of FIDAE, CSQA, MOIGE, ISRE and the Court of Milan – UNI created the UNI/PdR 42 Reference Practice, entitled “Management system for the prevention and fight against bullying and cyberbullying”.This practice—which was the first pre-normative document in the world entirely dedicated to defining a management system for preventing and combating bullying and cyberbullying —undoubtedly had the merit of bringing such a sensitive social issue to the attention of the standardization community and thus laid the foundation for the development of a significant new standard.
This is UNI 12000:2025 , which draws on the experience gained over the years with a clear objective: to focus the approach to preventing and combating bullying and cyberbullying, particularly in the sports and recreational sectors.
The standard provides a comprehensive framework of requirements for implementing an effective management system within all organizations operating in the sports, games, recreation, and hospitality sectors, aimed at minors and young adults.
These include, for example, sports and play facilities, summer camps, holiday camps, residential communities, family homes, parishes, youth clubs, vocational training centers, and reception centers for unaccompanied minors, as well as detention facilities.
The new UNI standard for preventing and combating bullying and cyberbullying represents the latest step in a significant journey to extend the tools of voluntary technical standardization, conformity certification, and accreditation to the social responsibility sector, specifically on a topic of such critical educational importance as bullying and cyberbullying.
This virtuous mechanism, moreover, will perfectly parallel the legislative process on bullying that is being completed for the school system, along the lines of Law 70 of 2024, which calls for the adoption of anti-bullying tools in all formal and informal educational settings and gatherings aimed at minors and young adults.
UNI 12000 applies regardless of the size, type of business, or organizational structure: an important step towards promoting safer, more responsible, and more inclusive environments in all settings dedicated to young people.
The new standard therefore represents a practical and fundamental reference for certifying one's anti-bullying management system.
An appendix in the standard contains the requirements for third-party conformity assessment and the issuing of the UNI "Management System" mark: a further guarantee attesting to the quality and validity of the management system for the prevention and fight against bullying adopted by the organization in compliance with the UNI 12000 standard.
This is also a reference model for defining an effective safeguarding policy to protect minors and young adults that extends its application to various forms of abuse beyond bullying.
The regulator's specific choice to focus the scope of the regulation on the sports and recreational sectors is motivated by the fact that the school sector – a topic covered by the previously cited reference practice – is already regulated by current legislation.
We can therefore speak of a virtuous and concrete example of the transformation of a Reference Practice into an effective and applicable technical standard.
The validity and value of the UNI 12000 standard are such that it is being considered for inclusion in the National Anti-Bullying Plan, currently being approved by the Government, under the coordination of the Department for Family Policies of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. (Source: https://www.uni.com /)