Publications

The Energy Statistics Pocketbook highlights the availability of data on various aspects of energy production, transformation and use and its linkages to other key statistics. It uses visual representations of key energy indicators to facilitate the understanding of the current state and developments in the energy sector. Energy is central to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on climate change, and sound energy statistics are the basis for the reliable measurement of progress, thereby assisting the formulation of policy measures to achieve international and national sustainable development goals.

Growing inequality in both developing and developed countries could exacerbate divisions and slow economic and social development according to a new UN report, the World Social Report 2020, that was launched today. More than two thirds of the world’s population today live in countries where inequality has grown, and inequality is rising again even in some of the countries that have seen inequality decline in recent decades, such as Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.

The impacts of inequality are being felt at the personal and national levels. According to the report, which is produced by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, highly unequal societies are less effective at…

The United Nations National Quality Assurance Frameworks Manual for Official Statistics (UN NQAF Manual) provides recommendations on quality assurance, a UN quality assurance framework, and guidance for the implementation of a national quality assurance framework. The Manual aims at addressing quality assurance in different circumstances and situations, hereby supporting countries in safeguarding the role of official statistics as trusted source of information. The Manual is directed at assuring the quality of official statistics throughout the entire national statistical system but also provides guidance for engagement with entities that are outside of the national statistical system…

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) has been in place for more than a decade. Has it made a difference? What kind of impact has it had on the survival, dignity and well-being of indigenous peoples. How has it been used? What can be learned from the many ways in which it has been applied and from the obstacles encountered? What gaps and challenges still exist that may be preventing the full implementation of the Declaration? What is the way forward to realize the full potential and promise of the Declaration? These are the questions this publication seeks to explore. This edition of the State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples (SOWIP)…

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 --…

The 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) prominently feature institutions, both as a cross-cutting issue in many of the goals and as a standalone goal (SDG 16). The World Public Sector Report 2019 looks at national-level developments in relation to several concepts highlighted in the targets of Goal 16, which are viewed as institutional principles: access to information, transparency, accountability, anti-corruption, inclusiveness of decision-making processes, and non-discrimination. The report surveys global trends in these areas, documenting both the availability of information on those trends and the status of knowledge about the effectiveness of related policies…

The world’s population is expected to increase by 2 billion persons in the next 30 years, from 7.7 billion currently to 9.7 billion in 2050, according to a new United Nations report launched today.

The World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights, which is published by the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, provides a comprehensive overview of global demographic patterns and prospects. The study concluded that the world’s population could reach its peak around the end of the current century, at a level of nearly 11 billion.

The report also confirmed that the world’s population is growing older due to increasing life expectancy and…

The 2030 Agenda, pledging to “leave no one behind,” is an ambitious plan of action of the international community towards a peaceful and prosperous world, where dignity of an individual person and equality among all is applied as the fundamental principle, cutting across the three pillars of the work of the United Nations: Development, Human Rights and Peace and Security. It is critical to ensure, in this regard, the full and equal participation of persons with disabilities in all spheres of society and create enabling environments by, for and with persons with disabilities.

The UN Disability and Development Report – Realizing the SDGs by, for and with persons with…

The World Youth Report on “Youth and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, prepared by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), examines the mutually supportive roles of the new agenda and current youth development efforts. The report provides insight into the role of young people in sustainable development in the context of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and related frameworks, in particular, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development and the World Programme of Action for Youth.

The Report considers the role the 2030 Agenda can play in enhancing youth…

Countries in all regions of the world are continuing to make strides in their efforts to improve e-government and to provide public services online according to a new report launched by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs today.

In a 2018 ranking of countries on e-government development, Denmark, Australia, and Republic of Korea came out on top of a group of 40 countries, scoring very high on an index (the E-Government Development Index—EGDI), which measures countries’ use of information and communications technologies to deliver public services. The Index captures the scope and quality of online services, status of telecommunication infrastructure and…

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…