Welcome to the United Nations
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 172: The New Landscape of Fertility and Family Planning 30 Years After Cairo and Beijing
Thirty years after the landmark Cairo and Beijing conferences, the world has witnessed both progress and continued challenges
in many aspects of sexual and reproductive health, including adolescent childbearing and contraceptive use. Within the broad picture of progress and stalls in sexual and reproductive health, this policy brief examines in more depth the changes in adolescent birth rates and family planning in the context of global fertility decline over the last 30 years and discusses the challenges of living up to the commitments made at Cairo and Beijing moving forward.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 167: Leveraging population trends for a more sustainable and inclusive future: Insights from World Population Prospects 2024
Understanding how population trends are likely to unfold in the short, medium and long terms is critical for achieving a more inclusive, prosperous and sustainable future. This policy brief provides an overview of some of the main findings of the World Population Prospects 2024: Summary of Results with the aim of helping countries prepare for population sizes, age structures and spatial distributions that may differ appreciably from those of their recent past.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 163: Policy Choices for Leaving No One Behind (LNOB): Overview From 2023 SDG Summit Commitments
Prioritizing leaving no one behind (LNoB), 31 countries have introduced new policies and commitments aimed at eradicating poverty, enhancing human capital, addressing uneven access to basic necessities, improving decision-making processes on sustainable development and ensuring no country or locality is left behind.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 161: On the path to an older population: Maximizing the benefits from the demographic dividend in the least developed countries
While many least developed countries (LDCs) are still experiencing persistently high fertility and rapid population growth, they have also begun to experience progressive population ageing. Preparing for population ageing in LDCs will be critical for achieving sustainable development and ensuring that no one is left behind. Maximizing the benefits from the demographic dividend will provide an opportunity for these countries to develop economically before their populations become much older.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 159: Demographic Outlook for the Small Island Developing States: Implications of Population Trends for Building Resilience and Prosperity across SIDS
SIDS have small populations, limited resources and are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Understanding their demographic outlook will help them to address these unique challenges.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 158: How can we accelerate transformations to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Insights from the 2023 Global Sustainable Development Report
Progress on the SDGs requires integrated approaches operating at a systemic level that address multiple goals simultaneously. Interventions toward progress on a given target must also generate positive synergies with other targets, while resolving tradeoffs. Transformative change does not follow a linear path, and policy needs will vary across contexts and phases of transformation. Policies should respond to impediments unique to each phase – emergence, acceleration, or stabilization.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 156: Enhancing Public Institutions’ Risk-informed Communication to address Multifaceted Crises for Disaster Risk Reduction, Resilience and Climate Action
The ability to provide accurate, timely, and reliable information to the public and responders in crises situations is central to risk-informed communication. This brief seeks to examine how to strengthen risk-informed communication for addressing multifaceted crises management, disaster risk reduction, and climate action. It identifies key challenges for strengthening government institutions that are responsible for effective communication, provides guidance on how to integrate risk-informed communication strategies into disaster management and proposes policy recommendations.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 153: India overtakes China as the world’s most populous country
Taking account of future population trends in national development planning is essential for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular, those related to poverty, food security, health, education, gender equality, decent work, inequality, urbanization and the environment, and for ensuring that no one is left behind.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 152: Population, education and sustainable development: interlinkages and select policy implications
The demographic transition, including decreased fertility and child dependency, brings opportunities to boost the human capital of young people and adults alike.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 150: Economic well-being at older ages: prospects for the future
More must be done to tackle decent work challenges, promote transitions from informal to formal employment, combat long-term unemployment and strengthen mechanisms to set and adjust wages.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 149: Promoting Youth Participation in Decision-Making and Public Service Delivery through Harnessing Digital Technologies
Public institutions shall take policy measures to address challenges and build an enabling ecosystem for youth engagement and participation, with a focus on bridging the youth digital divide and supporting digital skills development of youth.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 147: Old age inequality begins at birth: life course influences on late-life disability
Improving working conditions and access to quality education across the lifecycle can help reduce inequality in health outcomes among older adults. Expanding healthcare coverage and addressing the social determinants of health are also vital.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 146: Why safe, orderly and regular migration matters for sustainable development
Respecting, protecting and fulfilling the human rights of all migrants, regardless of their migration status, benefit migrants and countries alike. Addressing the adverse drivers and structural factors that hinder people from building and maintaining sustainable livelihoods in their own countries and communities can reduce the pressure to migrate.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 145: On the importance of monitoring inequality in life expectancy
Financing and enhancing statistical capacity for high-quality, timely and reliable disaggregated data in developing countries, is essential to better understand and respond to inequalities in life expectancy.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 143: Caregiving in an ageing world
Rethinking approaches to long-term care will benefit today’s older persons and those who care for them, but also future generations of older persons. Countries should consider a more equitable, person-centred approach to care, operating across governments, businesses, civil society, communities and households to address needs in the provision of both formal and informal care.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 140: A World of 8 Billion
Wealthy countries and the international community should support sustainable development in low-income and lower-middle-income countries by providing the necessary technical and financial assistance so that their economies can grow rapidly using technologies that minimise environmental harms.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 139: Strengthening Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience for Climate Action through Risk-informed Governance
Ensuring risk-informed governance for climate action requires citizen-centric approach through the whole-of-society and whole-of-government approaches including the leverage of government innovation and frontier technologies for DRR and resilience.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 133: Migration Trends and Families
It is indispensable to incorporate a family perspective into migration policy analysis. Since families socialize and provide economically and emotionally for the next generation, they should be seen as essential for migrants’ integration into new societies. Thus, policies facilitating family reunification, social protection and intergenerational support are key in successful integration.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 130: Why population growth matters for sustainable development
World population continues to grow and is expected to peak at a level of almost 11 billion around the year 2100. Most of this growth will take place in low-income and lower middle-income countries.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 124: Integrated National Financing Frameworks – moving towards financing policy integration
INFFs have an important role to play both in the immediate response to the current crisis and in rebuilding better. Integrated financing strategies can serve as a starting point for locally driven reform processes, providing a foundation for action.