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2015 Tutu Fellow Wiebe Boer PhD has been appointed to serve on the the UN Technical Working Group 5: Finance and Investment, joining 27 other sector experts. This cross-cutting and multidisciplinary UN Technical Working Group addresses “how public and private finance and investment can be mobilized and leveraged to achieve the 2025 Milestones, SDG7 and carbon neutrality, taking also into consideration enabling mechanisms such as the fiscal response to COVID-19, fossil fuel subsidy reform; green investment regulation; risk management and insurance.”

The objective of Working Group 5 is is to distill the expertise and inputs from the members of the working group to identify recommendations that are “ambitious, innovative and fit-for-purpose, of high impact, and replicable at scale across geographies and themes”.

2014 Tutu Fellow Aua Baldé has been appointed to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances by the Human Rights Council. The appointment was made during its 54th session, in October 2020.

The main goal of the Working Group is to assist families of missing people to discover their fate or whereabouts, and act as a channel of communication between the families of victims and governments.

The UN African States for the Working Group, established in 1980, was the first thematic mechanism created under the United Nations Human Rights Program to address specific violations of human rights of a particularly serious nature, practiced worldwide.

2014 Tutu Fellow Sello Hatang - the CEO of the Nelson Mandela Foundation - secured the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, to deliver the 18th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture on the theme: Tackling the inequality pandemic: A new social contract for a new era. 

Hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation in partnership with the UN, the event took place virtually on 18 July 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the lecture was, for the first time, an online-only event, delivered at the UN headquarters in New York City.

2008 Tutu Fellow Eunice Ajambo has drafted a United Nations policy brief titled COVID-19: An Emerging Development Challenge, but opportunity for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Namibia.  The policy brief examines economic transformation in the context of COVID-19 and analyses how Namibia is currently fairing. It provides a socio-economic impact assessment for short, medium- and long-term recommendations in addressing COVID-19. She makes the point that crises can be an opportunity to prioritize economic transformation.

Eunice is the Economic Affairs Officer with the Macroeconomics and Governance Division of the UN Economic Commission for Africa.  Her work on economic policy spans economic governance, development finance, and public sector management.

Two Tutu Fellows have been selected by MIPAD for its list of the 100 Most Influential People of African Descent under 40 for 2017. Both were in the category Business & Entrepreneurship.  The other categories were Politics & Governance; Media & Culture; and, Religious & Humanitarian. The Fellows who were selected are 2014 Fellow Ntombenhle Khathwane, the Founder of AfroBotanics; and 2013 Fellow Ally Angula, the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Leap Holdings.

Tutu Fellow James Mwangi has been appointed to the United Nations' Foundation Global Entrepreneurs Council.  The announcement, which took place in Dubai on 24 October 2015, was made by Rick Parnell, the COO of the foundation. The council is comprised of leading entrepreneurs from around the world to incorporate innovation and sustainable economic growth to support the newly adopted U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.  Parnell said that a multi-sector, integrated approach was needed over the 15 years to accomplish the sustainable development goals.  He said that the newly appointed council members would bring a wealth of "experience, accomplishments and global reach to help the Foundation support the UN as it tackles that challenge."

Tutu Fellow Victor Ochen addressed the United Nation General Assembly at a high-level event  called “Mobilizing Generation Zero Hunger,” in which he recounted surviving seven years of childhood having only one meal a day. He did not just know about hunger from books, he knew hunger from experience, he told the event, which also featured Brazilian footballer and WFP Ambassador against Hunger, Kaká and UN leader, Ban Ki-Moon.  Ochen's organization AYINET continues to deal with the challenge of hunger as it works with victims of war.