The 19 recommendations cover humanitarian assistance, peace-building, education, gender equality, the environment and the fight against HIV/AIDS.
They were adopted on 21-22 May during the first joint UN-IOC forum, entitled 'The Importance of Partnership', in Lausanne.
The participants, including NGOs and academic experts, stressed the need to embed sport in national development policies to leverage its instrumental potential in the field.
The forum also underlined the need to avoid creating parallel structures between the various different players and duplicating activities.
2010 FIFA World Cup
In the forum, the UN stressed that this year's football World Cup, which kicks off in South Africa on Friday (11 June), presents the country and the rest of the continent with a unique opportunity to build peace and development.
"The World Cup in South Africa is a unique occasion to transform the African people's pride and enthusiasm into a positive dynamic of solidarity, tolerance and development," said Wilfried Lemke, special adviser to the UN secretary-general on sport for development and peace.
A number of UN funds, programmes and specialised agencies are making use of the World Cup as a platform for outreach and collaboration to leverage the power of the event.
Last October, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution urging the international community to harness the World Cup for the development of the whole African continent.
Action plan on development through football
Earlier this spring, representatives of 63 development NGOs, football clubs, players' unions, sport organisations, academic institutions and governmental bodies gathered at an international conference on 'Development through Football' in Vienna to adopt an action plan on football for development.
The action plan calls for football governing bodies to support initiatives in the area of development through sport, especially at grass-roots level, and assign at least 0.7% of total revenue to social responsibility initiatives, for example.
It further suggests the establishment of a strategy to raise media awareness of development through sport and using football as a tool for preventing violence, gender inequality, ethnic tensions and war.
