Publications

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 Demographic Yearbook 2009-2010 is the sixty-first in a series published by the United Nations since 1948. It contains tables including a world summary of selected demographic statistics, statistics on the size, distribution and trends in national populations, fertility, foetal mortality, infant and maternal mortality, general mortality, nuptiality and divorce. Data are shown by urban/rural residence, as available. In addition, the volume provides Technical Notes, a synoptic table, a historical index and a listing of the issues of the Demographic Yearbook published to date.

The number of deaths of children under the age of five declined from 12.4 million in 1990 to 8.1 million in 2009, which means nearly 12,000 fewer children die each day. Some of the world’s poorest countries have also made impressive gains in the fight against poverty, but the least developed countries still lag in efforts to improve living standards.

The world continues to make advances towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), despite the global economic downturn, but the rate of improvement remains too slow and countries must step up their efforts if the MDGs are to be achieved by their target date of 2015, a new United Nations report says. The annual assessment report, released today by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, shows that the world has made huge strides in reducing extreme poverty...

The United Nations Statistical Yearbook is an annual compilation of a wide range of international economic, social and environmental statistics for over 200 countries and areas of the world, compiled from sources including UN agencies and other international, national and specialized organizations. The fifty-second issue contains data available to the Statistics Division as of June 2008 and presents them in 68 tables on topics including: agriculture; balance of payments; communication; development assistance; education; energy; environment; finance and gender.

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 Millennium Development Goals report presents a yearly assessment of global progress towards achieving the MDGs. It is prepared by the Statistics Division at DESA on the basis of input provided by the members of the Inter-agency and Expert Group on MDG Indicators. Less than six years away from the 2015 deadline to achieve the MDGs, this report warns that despite many successes, overall progress has been...

This report presents an assessment of progress, based on data available as of June 2008 on all official Millennium Development Goals (MDG) indicators, including the new ones introduced. The aggregate figures in the report provide an overall assessment of regional progress under the eight goals and are a convenient way to track advances over time.

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…