Publications

This guide has been developed as a resource for Member States to provide information about the inclusion of youth in their delegations and offers ideas for those with existing youth delegate programmes on how to potentially strengthen them. It includes sections on establishing a programme, suggestions for possible roles of youth delegates and practicalities to be considered.

The year 2020 witnessed a transformational change in global development as the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called on Member States and other stakeholders to “kickstart a decade of delivery and action for people and planet”, given the short time left to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. By surveying and studying broad patterns of digital government around the world, the United Nations E-Government Survey assesses the digital government development of the 193 United Nations Member States in identifying their strengths, challenges and opportunities, as well as informing policies and strategies. The Survey supports countries’ efforts to provide…

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…

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…

Achieving human well-being and eradicating poverty for all of the Earth’s people—expected to number eight and a half billion by 2030—is still possible, but only if there is a fundamental—and urgent—change in the relationship between people and nature, and a significant reduction in social and gender inequalities between and inside countries, according to a new United Nations report by an independent group of scientists to be launched at the 2019 SDG Summit, but made available today.

The Report, requested by all countries to evaluate progress on the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, is the first of its kind since the landmark Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted…

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 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…

Two years ago, Member States of the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Acknowledging possible synergies and trade-offs between the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and targets will make it much easier to achieve the Agenda and to translate ambition into reality.

The World Public Sector Report 2018 aims to inform efforts by countries to foster policy integration for implementing the SDGs. It asks, what are the challenges to and opportunities for policy integration across the different stages of policy cycle at the national level? What are some innovative examples of institutional and administrative arrangements that can foster integrated…

If the world is to eradicate poverty, address climate change and build peaceful, inclusive societies for all by 2030, key stakeholders, including governments, must drive implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at a faster rate, according to the The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2017, launched by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Using the most recent data available, the annual Sustainable Development Goals Report provides an overview of the world’s implementation efforts to date, highlighting areas of progress and areas where more action needs to be taken to ensure no one is left behind. The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2017report found that…