The UN DESA Annual Highlights report is a tool to communicate the contributions of the Department to the realization of internationally agreed development goals and shared social, economic, and environmental aspirations. It showcases the Department’s role in gauging trends, building capacities, and shaping solutions. UN DESA Highlights 2025 covers activities over the period of the 79th Session of the General Assembly (September 2024 – August 2025) and reflects the Department’s response to the set priorities and expressed needs of Member States. Seven (7) thematic chapters showcase how UN DESA put its expertise to the task of supporting Member State efforts to implement the 2030 Agenda…

The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2025 marks the tenth annual stocktaking of global progress toward the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. With the 2030 deadline only five years away, the report delivers a stark assessment: the Sustainable Development Goals have improved millions of lives, but the current pace of change is insufficient to fully achieve all the Goals by 2030.

The report reveals real and substantial development gains during the past decade. Since 2015, the world has made notable strides in expanding access to education, improving maternal and child health, and bridging the digital divide. Effective prevention efforts have significantly reduced the…

The world economy is at a precarious moment. Heightened trade tensions, along with policy uncertainty, have significantly weakened the global economic outlook for 2025. Higher tariffs—resulting in a significant increase in the effective tariff rate in the United States of America—are likely to strain global supply chains, drive up production costs and delay critical investment decisions, while also contributing to financial market volatility. Global economic growth is now projected to slow to 2.4 per cent in 2025, down from 2.9 per cent in 2024, and 0.4 percentage points below the January forecast. The downward revisions in growth forecasts are broad-based, affecting both developed and…

The UN DESA Annual Highlights report is a tool to communicate the contributions of the Department to the realization of internationally agreed development goals and shared social, economic, and environmental aspirations. It showcases the Department’s role in gauging trends, building capacities, and shaping solutions. UN DESA Highlights 2023–2024 covers activities over the period of the 78th Session of the General Assembly (September 2023 – August 2024) and reflects the Department’s response to the set priorities and expressed needs of Member States. Seven (7) thematic chapters showcase how UN DESA put its expertise to the task of supporting Member State efforts to implement the 2030…

The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2024 details the significant challenges the world is facing in making substantial strides towards achieving the SDGs based on the latest data and estimates. It features areas with setbacks while also showcasing where tangible progress has been made, for instance, in reducing global child mortality, preventing HIV infection, and access to energy and mobile broadband. The report also highlights where action must accelerate, particularly in critical areas undermining SDG progress - climate change, peace and security, inequalities among and between countries, among others.

According to the report, with just six years remaining, current progress…

Global economic growth is projected to slow from an estimated 2.7 per cent in 2023 to 2.4 per cent in 2024, trending below the pre-pandemic growth rate of 3.0 per cent, according to the United Nations World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP) 2024. This latest forecast comes on the heels of global economic performance exceeding expectations in 2023. However, last year’s stronger-than-expected GDP growth masked short-term risks and structural vulnerabilities. 

The UN’s flagship economic report presents a sombre economic outlook for the near term. Persistently high interest rates, further escalation of conflicts, sluggish international trade, and increasing climate…

The UN DESA Annual Highlights report is a tool to communicate the contributions of the Department to the realization of internationally agreed development goals and shared social, economic, and environmental aspirations. It showcases the Department’s role in gauging trends, building capacities, and shaping solutions. UN DESA Highlights 2022-2023 covers activities over the period of the 77th Session of the General Assembly (September 2022 – August 2023) and reflects the Department’s response to the set priorities and expressed needs of Member States. Seven (7) thematic chapters showcase how UN DESA put its expertise to the task of supporting Member State efforts to implement the 2030…

Times of Crisis, Times of Change: Science for Accelerating Transformations to Sustainable Development", the 2023 Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR), finds that at this critical juncture, midway to 2030, incremental and fragmented change is insufficient to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the remaining seven years. Implementation of the 2030 Agenda requires the active mobilization of political leadership and ambition for science-based transformations. This must be achieved globally - leaving no country, society or person behind. The report is an invitation to embrace transformations with the urgency needed to accelerate progress towards the SDGs.

The…

According to The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2023: Special Edition, failure to redouble global efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals – the promise of a better world for all – may fuel greater political instability, upend economies and lead to irreversible damage to the natural environment.

World leaders made a historic promise to secure the rights and well-being of everyone on a healthy, thriving planet when they agreed to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 SDGs in 2015. However, the combined impacts of the climate crisis, the war in Ukraine, a gloomy global economic outlook and lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have revealed…

A series of severe and mutually reinforcing shocks — the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and resulting food and energy crises, surging inflation, debt tightening, as well as the climate emergency — battered the world economy in 2022. Against this backdrop, world output growth is projected to decelerate from an estimated 3.0 per cent in 2022 to 1.9 per cent in 2023, marking one of the lowest growth rates in recent decades.

The World Economic Situation and Prospects 2023 presents a gloomy and uncertain economic outlook for the near term. Global growth is forecast to moderately pick up to 2.7 per cent in 2024 as some of the headwinds will begin to subside. However, this is…

The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022 provides a global overview of progress on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, using the latest available data and estimates. It tracks the global and regional progress towards the 17 Goals with in-depth analyses of selected indicators for each Goal.

According to the Report, cascading and interlinked crises are putting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in grave danger, along with humanity’s very own survival. The Report highlights the severity and magnitude of the challenges before us. The confluence of crises, dominated by COVID-19, climate change, and conflicts, are creating spin-off impacts on…

More countries and communities are recognizing the need to bolster efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in light of the toll the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on people around the world, according to The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2021, released by the United Nations.

The decisions and actions taken during the next 18 months would determine whether pandemic recovery plans would put the world on a course to reach the globally-agreed upon goals that aim to boost economic growth and social well-being while protecting the environment.

According to the report, which tracks global efforts to achieve the SDGs, COVID-19 had caused a major disruption…