Publications
![](/sites/default/files/styles/max_width_300px/public/publications/cover-image/2023/DESA_Highlights_2022_2023_Cover.png?itok=6cSW00vl)
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…
![](/sites/default/files/styles/max_width_300px/public/publications/cover-image/2023/SDGS-2023.jpg?itok=UBNJrY9X)
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…
![](/sites/default/files/styles/max_width_300px/public/publications/cover-image/2022/The-Sustainable-Development-Goals-Report-2022%20%281%29-01.jpg?itok=H3T3StAy)
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…
![](/sites/default/files/styles/max_width_300px/public/publications/cover-image/2021/sdg-2021-e-cover1-3.jpg?itok=4EtEXWfq)
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…
![](/sites/default/files/styles/max_width_300px/public/publications/cover-image/2021/wsr_2021-cover.jpg?itok=gpgtanEX)
New approaches made possible through improved access and Internet connectivity can raise the standard of living for approximately 3.4 billion people living in rural areas, without them having to migrate to cities, according to the newly released 2021 World Social Report “Reconsidering Rural Development.”
The COVID-19 pandemic, together with already persistent high levels of poverty and inequalities, are threatening to stall progress for the world’s rural populations. But the pandemic has also proven that new technologies can enable rural populations to flourish, ending the rural-urban divide.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the new technologies opened up new…
![](/sites/default/files/styles/max_width_300px/public/publications/cover-image/2022/WW2020-TS-web-book-opt.png?itok=juKzbEWF)
Less than 50% of working-age women are in the labour market, a figure that has barely changed over the last quarter of a century, according to a new UN report launched today. Unpaid domestic and care work falls disproportionately on women, restraining their economic potential as the COVID-19 pandemic additionally affects women’s jobs and livelihoods, the report warns.
The World’s Women 2020: Trends and Statistics compiles 100 data stories that provide a snapshot of the state of gender equality worldwide. Presented on an interactive portal, the report analyses gender equality in six critical areas: population and families; health; education; economic empowerment and…
The new report examines five megatrends: climate change; demographic shifts, particularly population ageing; urbanization; the emergence of digital technologies; and inequalities –that are affecting economic, social and environmental outcomes. Efforts to reverse or redirect these trends must be reinforced to ensure that we achieve the full measure of the 2030 Agenda, and set the stage for an inclusive, sustainable and equitable future during the next 75 years.
All trends are the result of human activity, and as such, they can be shaped by human decisions and policy choices. By making the right choices today, without further delay, it is not too late to shape the major trends of…
![](/sites/default/files/styles/max_width_300px/public/publications/cover-image/2022/The-Sustainable-Development-Goals-Report-2020-01.jpg?itok=fyCTrPSq)
The 15-year global effort to improve the lives of people everywhere through the achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 was already off track by the end of 2019. And in only a short period of time, the COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed an unprecedented crisis, causing further disruption to SDG progress, with the world’s poorest and most vulnerable affected the most.
According to the Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020, released by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the world had been making progress—although uneven and insufficient to meet the Goals — in areas such as improving maternal and child health, expanding access to…
The impacts of climate change and increasing inequality across and within countries are undermining progress on the sustainable development agenda, threatening to reverse many of the gains made over the last decades that have improved people’s lives, warns the 2019 report on the Sustainable Development Goals.
Launched during the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, a critical annual stocktaking event, the report, based on the latest available data, remains the cornerstone for measuring progress and identifying gaps in the implementation of all 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
Four years since the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals --…
![](/sites/default/files/styles/max_width_300px/public/publications/cover-image/2022/WESS%20cover-2018.png?itok=am-67zSg)
New frontier technologies — everything from renewable energy technologies to biodegradable plastics, artificial intelligence and electric vehicles — hold immense potential to improve people’s lives and significantly accelerate efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and address climate change. But without appropriate policies, they can also drive greater inequality and increase social dislocations.
The World Economic and Social Survey 2018 produced by UN DESA found that renewable energy technologies and efficient energy storage systems are already enhancing environmental sustainability, allowing countries to “leapfrog” over existing technological solutions. New…
A fast-changing climate, conflict, inequality, persistent pockets of poverty and hunger and rapid urbanization are challenging countries’ efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), according to the UN’s latest SDG progress report.
The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2018 found that conflict and climate change were major contributing factors leading to growing numbers of people facing hunger and forced displacement, as well as curtailing progress towards universal access to basic water and sanitation services.
For the first time in more than a decade, there were approximately 38 million more hungry people in the world, rising from 777 million in…
Today, 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 68% by 2050. Projections show that urbanization, the gradual shift in residence of the human population from rural to urban areas, combined with the overall growth of the world’s population could add another 2.5 billion people to urban areas by 2050, with close to 90% of this increase taking place in Asia and Africa, according to a new United Nations data set launched today.
The 2018 Revision of World Urbanization Prospects produced by the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) notes that future increases in the size of the…