Publications

The lives of women and girls around the world have improved in several areas over the last 20 years, according to the new UN DESA report “The World’s Women 2015,” launched today. Coming on the heels of the recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this new set of data on women and girls worldwide brings into sharp perspective the need for gender equality outlined in Goal 5.  

“We cannot achieve our 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development without full and equal rights for half of the world’s population, in law and in practice,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a recent event on gender equality organized on the side of the Sustainable Development Summit.…

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) achieved significant progress over the past 15 years, but persistent gaps in official development assistance and an insufficient access to markets, affordable medicines and new technologies have highlighted the need for a rejuvenation of the global partnership for development, according to a new report launched today by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The “Taking Stock of the Global Partnership for Development” report of the United Nations MDG Gap Task Force monitors the recent achievements and challenges in the implementation of the Millennium Development Goal 8, while looking ahead towards the new…

Targets for the Millennium Development Goals related to the global partnership to improve people’s lives and end poverty show mixed results on providing the poorest developing countries with greater access to aid, trade, debt relief, essential medicines and technologies, according to a new report launched today by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The lives of millions of people worldwide have improved due to concerted efforts – at the global, regional, national and local levels – to achieve the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Recent statistics show that with many MDG targets already met – including reducing poverty, increasing access to clean drinking…

The United Nations has updated a set of guidelines to prevent double taxation between countries, as well as to avoid tax evasion, which costs countries $3.1 trillion every year.

The UN Model Double Taxation Convention between Developed and Developing Countries (the UN Model) is used by countries as a basis for negotiation of their bilateral tax treaties.

Double tax treaties are agreements to prevent taxing income twice by allocating taxing rights over this income between two countries. These types of treaties play a key role in encouraging investment and technology transfer, while allowing governments to retain taxing rights over the money that comes from those investments…

The publication presents statistics and analysis on the status of women and men in the world, highlighting the current situation and changes over time. It was prepared to coincide with and in observance of the first-ever World Statistics Day, 20.10.2010. The report is the fifth in the series which has been published every five years, as called for in the Beijing Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. As in the past editions, the presentation is made in a format and language that non-specialists can readily understand.

The World Survey on the Role of Women in Development is the flagship publication of the DESA's Division for the Advancement of Women. It is presented to the Second Committee of the General Assembly at five-yearly intervals. The 1999 World Survey focused on globalization, gender and work and the 2004 World Survey addressed women and international migration. The General Assembly requested...

The present report recognizes that further progress has been made towards fulfilling the promises embodied in Millennium Development Goal 8 (MDG 8). At the same time, it identifies important setbacks, most of which have arisen from the current state of the world economy which is suffering its severest downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Some donor countries are cutting their budgets for official development assistance (ODA); several developed and developing countries have resorted to protectionist measures; resurging debt distress is increasing the need for further and broader debt relief; the costs of essential medicines are on the rise; and the technological divide…

The MDG Gap Task Force has assessed the global commitments contained in the framework of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) ratified by Governments as the various international events that followed the Millennium Summit. The United Nations Millennium Declaration emphasized that strengthened global partnerships for development were needed to provide the enabling environment for accelerating progress in reducing poverty, improving health and education, establishing gender equality and ensuring the protection of the environment as defined in the MDGs.

The main message of the present report is that while there has been progress on several counts, important gaps remain in…